U.S. Elections: Orange is the New Wack

[James Arryn]

4 minutes ago, Daniel Plainview said:

I would love to see serious and significant criticisms of her that are not apart of conspiracy theories that have those critics failing to provide proof, or whining about a petty comment and acting like it was the end of the world, or the criticism implying that Trump and Clinton are on equal levels of bad when they clearly are not. 

 But hey, pointing that out means that you see no issue with Clinton yea? 

Well, I have criticisms of her. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories, I certainly don't think they're petty, and have argued against the silly idea of equivalence, yet you're telling me that doesn't happen...so yeah, when you dismiss all criticisms as falling into the categories you did above, that's pretty much saying you see no significant issue.

If you do in fact see any significant criticism as valid, then why would you need to stear it into those dismissible categories?

[James Arryn]

14 minutes ago, Guess who's back said:

John Oliver really offers a fair and unbiased view. lmao. I actually wonder how many liberals have these comics as the only source of their political news(or any news for that matter). 

The country would be less ignorant if they did...you know that, right?

Studies showed that viewers who got their political news from the Daily Show were much mores formed and accurately informed than viewers who got theirs from mainstream news...and everyone else was more informed than viewers who got theirs from FOX.

I say all this while having only yesterday acknowledged that shows like Daily, Oliver and SNL have definite anti-Republican bias. But they're still more informed, and informed more accurately.

[Boris the Blade]

18 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Well, I have criticisms of her. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories, I certainly don't think they're petty, and have argued against the silly idea of equivalence, yet you're telling me that doesn't happen...so yeah, when you dismiss all criticisms as falling into the categories you did above, that's pretty much saying you see no significant issue.

If you do in fact see any significant criticism as valid, then why would you need to stear it into those dismissible categories?

I have criticisms of her as well, from her foreign policy to her being a bit too close with certain companies for my taste. I think whining about her calling Trump supporters deplorable and acting like it was this huge gaffe is ridiculous since the comment was not the end of the world. It's a petty criticism. I also have yet to see the people that get the most shit here for their "criticisms" do so in a serious manner that did not involve all of what I stated above in the other comment. If you think that is me not seeing significant issues with some of her policies, oh fucking well, that is your problem, not mine. 

Also, maybe if you go back and read what I said, you would see that I am waiting for significant and serious criticism of her, at least from certain posters, ya know, the ones that get the most shit for the claims. 

[Jace, Extat]

11 minutes ago, Guess who's back said:

John Oliver really offers a fair and unbiased view. lmao. I actually wonder how many liberals have these comics as the only source of their political news(or any news for that matter). 

I didn't see him saying that, rather commenting on the quality of the show. As a liberal who does not regularly tune in to those comics (don't watch Oliver for example unless it's Thrones season) I'll tell you that Stein and Johnson are fucking morons and terrible candidates, even worse than Trump.

Stein combines Trump's lack of cohesive thoughts with the unforgivable anti-vaxx movement. She appears to have a similar understanding of how policy is driven.

Johnson is by his own admission ignorant of even the most basic elements of foreign policy and dismissed the threats of climate change by saying the world was gonna get eated by da sunball anyways. He also won his 'party' nomination standing next to a man wearing a boot on his head and wielding a giant toothbrush and the most comprehensive policy he can advocate is 'get rid of the IRA' with no real idea of what happens next. He also seeks to become defacto head of a government he claims to want disbanded so he's immediately either a liar or hypocrite.

And that's just the things I could think of with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a phone in the other.

At least Trump has a party that would scrape and kowtow to him to get their policies approved if he actually won.

[James Arryn]

1 minute ago, Daniel Plainview said:

1) I have criticisms of her as well, from her foreign policy to her being a bit too close with certain companies for my taste. I think whining about her calling Trump supporters deplorable and acting like it was this huge gaffe is ridiculous since the comment was not the end of the world. It's a petty criticism.

2) I also have yet to see the people that get the most shit here for their "criticisms" do so in a serious manner that did not involve all of what I stated above in the other comment. If you think that is me not seeing significant issues with some of her policies, oh fucking well, that is your problem, not mine. 

1) Adopting a consequentialist position here is IMO very problematic. For example, it would mean that any criticism of the any/all of the huge blunders Trump made that didn't 'end the world'...or see his support fall...was petty. Criticizing Trump for the Mexican rapists? Petty. Wall building, petty. Nuclear brinkmanship, petty. Torture, petty. 

If you're now going to argue that those are different because of content,mi'd say that's kinda proving the point about selectivity. 

Further, you're assessment of what was/was not 'the end of the world' is subjective. Her support really took a dive after that. Her supporters would rather contend that this was Flugate, but either are equally possible. Had Trump not continued to Trump, it's entirely possible that that tailspin could have proved to be decisive. 

2) That's changing your argument, though. I'd probably agree the the posters here who 'get the most shit'...ie criticize Clinton the most often...do often demonstrate many of the patterns you suggest. But not always, and moreover not all criticism of Clinton comes from those posters. But you issued blanket statements about all criticism of her, and as ME and I have noted, other posters react with similarly absolute rejections. 

[butterbumps!]

6 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Is this another one of those things where you have a good argument and evidence but can't tell it publicly for reasons?

I'm not sure how far you're going to get with this.  That poster rejects the idea that racism is central to Trump's campaign, and appears determined that whatever racism may exist there is no different, or of greater intensity, than politics as usual, which apparently hasn't evolved at all over the last 200 years.

16 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

I can't even decipher anything about what Trump's campaign is about. He seems to base policies on how bad somebody pissed him off that day. So I certainly don't see racism as any sort of undebatable central theme of his campaign.

 

16 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

not in context of the general US political system including the Democratic party I don't see it as anything more outlandishly racist than typical US politics of the past 2+ centuries. 

His campaign to me looks like a temper tantrum exercise in lashing out at anything and everything that can be lashed out at.

 

[The guy from the Vale]

2 hours ago, Daniel Plainview said:

I would love to see serious and significant criticisms of her that are not apart of conspiracy theories that have those critics failing to provide proof, or whining about a petty comment and acting like it was the end of the world, or the criticism implying that Trump and Clinton are on equal levels of bad when they clearly are not. 

 But hey, pointing that out means that you see no issue with Clinton yea? 

The obvious one would be HRC's hawkish foreign policy, which is indeed a step back from Obama (who wasn't entirely great either, but still a massive step forward from Bush the Lesser). That said, I'll still prefer the devil I know to the devil nobody knows. Hillary's foreign policy is not necessarily something I'm looking forward to, but at least, I know what to expect, in broad strokes. On the other hand, Trump's statements about NATO, Japan, the Koreas and nuclear weapons, as well as his adoration of Vladimir Putin, are absolutely frightening.

Or, in other words, I think Hillary's foreign policy is wrong, but it is wrong within normal parameters. Trump's foreign policy, on the other hand, is not even wrong - or a policy. It's just the rambling stream of consciousness of a thin-skinned narcissist who shouldn't be anywhere near the nuclear codes.

 

ETA: Oh well, looks like I'm late for the party...

 

 

[Fez]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Oh, I don't think it's going to happen like Brexit - but I do think that it's a possibility, and it's one of the things that makes it a lot harder to predict. In particular I think that Trump is nosediving so much that the press has switched from trying to make everything equivalent and make it a horserace to their other happy tactic - the disaster porn shooting, where they bend over backwards to try and find even more horrible things to talk about with respect to Trump. My gut feeling is that his really gung ho voters will vote for him happily, but a whole lot of rank and file Republicans will see the writing on the wall, understand Trump is going to lose, and simply not vote for him (and possibly not vote at all). 

My point, simply, is that we've had a surprisingly easy time of predicting elections for about 12 years now thanks to a combination of incredibly partisan lines and fairly easy to predict demographics and turnout systems. Whatever happens, I don't think we'll see a 'regular' outcome.

Electoral polling in other countries is generally quite poor compared to US elections. There's less of it conducted, so the averages aren't as robust, and in many cases its still a relatively new trend, so the pollsters don't have a great sense of baseline turnout assumptions yet. In the UK its particularly bad, where the polls also botched the last general election and were pretty far off on the Scottish referendum (although at least they had 'No' ahead).

But in the US, while polling errors do occur, and individual polls can be way off, the averages are generally pretty close to the mark. Looking back the primaries this year, the only big miss was Michigan on the Democratic side; basically every other well polled race, on both the Democratic and Republican sides, went as expected. I think this election will basically go as expected as well. There is still some uncertainty due to the higher than normal levels of undecideds and third-party supporters at this point; but many of those folks won't vote at all and will generally be a wash between Trump and Clinton.

And beyond them, there's no evidence of any huge surprises coming. For instance, there's not been any noticeable increases in voter registrations among white working class voters and pollsters are asking these voters about their intentions to vote, so there's no reason to think there will be a massive surge in votes from them. Likewise, with the level of voter contact that the Clinton campaign is achieving, they'd know if African American turnout was facing a massive slump; and if it was, that's the kind of thing that would quickly leak to the press.

There's a chance for Clinton winning some random Republican states that no one expects, and for Trump to win Maine, but I fully expect the Presidential election results to hew pretty closely to whatever the polling averages of the final week before say.

[Boris the Blade]

3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

1) Adopting a consequentialist position here is IMO very problematic. For example, it would mean that any criticism of the any/all of the huge blunders Trump made that didn't 'end the world'...or see his support fall...was petty. Criticizing Trump for the Mexican rapists? Petty. Wall building, petty. Nuclear brinkmanship, petty. Torture, petty. 

If you're now going to argue that those are different because of content,mi'd say that's kinda proving the point about selectivity. 

Further, you're assessment of what was/was not 'the end of the world' is subjective. Her support really took a dive after that. Her supporters would rather contend that this was Flugate, but either are equally possible. Had Trump not continued to Trump, it's entirely possible that that tailspin could have proved to be decisive. 

2) That's changing your argument, though. I'd probably agree the the posters here who 'get the most shit'...ie criticize Clinton the most often...do often demonstrate many of the patterns you suggest. But not always, and moreover not all criticism of Clinton comes from those posters. But you issued blanket statements about all criticism of her, and as ME and I have noted, other posters react with similarly absolute rejections. 

Hahaha no, there is a huge difference between calling white people deplorable for siding with a disgusting bigot like Trump and generalizing an entire marginalized demographic, people of color / immigrants through racism. Building a wall that would cost millions / billions of dollars that is based around the debunked idea the majority of the immigrants are Hispanic petty? no. Nuclear brinkmaship petty? Torture? Yea, they are totally petty and could not lead to people being physically harmed. False equivalency. That is what your entire first part of your post is. 

No, it is not subjective. It is not the end of the world, it only hurts little white feelings mostly since they are usually the extremely hypersensitive babies that can't deal with being told their are bigots and supporting bigotry. 

Since her detractors constantly whined about transparency, it's a safe bet that her getting sick and not telling anyone right away what it was is what gave a huge dip in the numbers, especially since the media was so focused on that as well which would help drive that narrative of her not being transparent enough home. 

The majority of the criticism recently has been from those posters. 
 

1 hour ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

The obvious one would be HRC's hawkish foreign policy, which is indeed a step back from Obama (who wasn't entirely great either, but still a massive step forward from Bush the Lesser). That said, I'll still prefer the devil I know to the devil nobody knows. Hillary's foreign policy is not necessarily something I'm looking forward to, but at least, I know what to expect, in broad strokes. On the other hand, Trump's statements about NATO, Japan, the Koreas and nuclear weapons, as well as his adoration of Vladimir Putin, are absolutely frightening.

Or, in other words, I think Hillary's foreign policy is wrong, but it is wrong within normal parameters. Trump's foreign policy, on the other hand, is not even wrong - or a policy. It's just the rambling stream of consciousness of a thin-skinned narcissist who shouldn't be anywhere near the nuclear codes.

 

ETA: Oh well, looks like I'm late for the party...

 

 

Yup, I agree.

[DunderMifflin]

2 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

I'm not sure how far you're going to get with this.  That poster rejects the idea that racism is central to Trump's campaign, and appears determined that whatever racism may exist there is no different, or of greater intensity, than politics as usual, which apparently hasn't evolved at all over the last 200 years.

 

 

Pandering for black votes doesn't make you not racist. 

[LongRider]

41 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Pandering for black votes doesn't make you not racist. 

Telling blacks that they all live in hopeless conditions (not true)

telling blacks that they don't have any good jobs (not true)

telling blacks that voting for him will magically make their lives better (not true)

and that voting for him because "what have you got to lose?" (oh, so very much)

is the worst sort of pandering. 

 

Is that what you meant?

[aceluby]

44 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Pandering for black votes doesn't make you not racist. 

What?  This isn't even close to a logical argument.

[Dr. Pepper]

3 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

I'm not sure how far you're going to get with this.  That poster rejects the idea that racism is central to Trump's campaign, and appears determined that whatever racism may exist there is no different, or of greater intensity, than politics as usual, which apparently hasn't evolved at all over the last 200 years.

I don't imagine I'd get very far with that this one at all considering he's also taken rabidly pro rape stances.  

And now he's suggesting that Trump is only pandering for the black vote.  Ugh.

[DunderMifflin]

"We are always an afterthought in politics. I'm not fighting very hard to give somebody a job when they don't impress me. The lesser of two evils is not drasticly different if at all in how it affects our community and people" - Sean Hargress

"Obama cruised to the White House off the huge support of black people. I don't believe we've got much to show for it." - Tabitha Collier

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ariadne23]

10 hours ago, Shryke said:

Yeah, the truth is that Trump is startlingly easy to understand (and manipulate) once you realise he's a thin-skinned ignorant misogynistic narcissist...

The Clinton campaign has done a really nice job baiting him. I don't get why Jeb or Marco's people didn't get it.

5 hours ago, Guess who's back said:

John Oliver really offers a fair and unbiased view. lmao. I actually wonder how many liberals have these comics as the only source of their political news(or any news for that matter). 

Last Week Tonight ironically contains many many more facts per airing than your average news program. And most print pieces. Truly. Have you ever watched it? I wouldn't watch as my only source of news, but I gotta say, I'd truly actually be less informed on many issues if I stopped watching it as many of the stories they cover aren't reported on anywhere else.

[DanteGabriel]

Just now, Ariadne23 said:

The Clinton campaign has done a really nice job baiting him. I don't get why Jeb or Marco's people didn't get it.

Maybe they did get it and the candidates couldn't capitalize. Hillary Clinton deserves credit for how well she handled Trump in the debates. She baited him without sinking to his level (like "Little Hands" Rubio) and without sputtering fecklessly in response (like "Low Energy" Bush). Guess what they say is true: sometimes the best man for the job is a woman.

Bush and Rubio were also fighting each other over which lukewarm Republican was going to be King of Florida.

[Weeping Sore]

5 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Stein...fucking morons and terrible candidates, even worse than Trump.

Stein combines Trump's lack of cohesive thoughts with the unforgivable anti-vaxx movement. She appears to have a similar understanding of how policy is driven.

Stein is an irrelevant candidate, but she is hardly a moron. She consistently comes from a starting point well to the left of the Democratic Party when it comes to energy policy, deportation, and foreign interventionism. I'll take your word that she's an anti-vaxxer, which if so is a pretty stupid position. That might be a case of her "pandering to her base", such as it is. Unlike Trump, though, she is quite capable of cogent thought. I'm open to the argument, "It's stupid to vote for Stein", but to just say "Stein is stupid" is lazy and inaccurate.

[IheartIheartTesla]

There's now two polls in Arizona that have Clinton ahead. Will be interesting to watch that state (and Utah, of course).

Folks say there are a lot of 'wasted' votes in places such as Texas where Clinton is overperforming, but Trump will eventually win. However, I am hopeful that will drive some change at least at the local level, assuming Presidential coattails transfer to local races. In that sense, and in the sense that close races in seemingly red states give the Democrats confidence for future elections, it isnt so bad for folks in that state to show up in force. Sort of laying groundwork for a future vote. 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

4 minutes ago, Weeping Sore said:

Stein is an irrelevant candidate, but she is hardly a moron. She consistently comes from a starting point well to the left of the Democratic Party when it comes to energy policy, deportation, and foreign interventionism. I'll take your word that she's an anti-vaxxer, which if so is a pretty stupid position. That might be a case of her "pandering to her base", such as it is. Unlike Trump, though, she is quite capable of cogent thought. I'm open to the argument, "It's stupid to vote for Stein", but to just say "Stein is stupid" is lazy and inaccurate.

She's not.

[butterbumps!]

50 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I don't imagine I'd get very far with that this one at all considering he's also taken rabidly pro rape stances.  

And now he's suggesting that Trump is only pandering for the black vote.  Ugh.

Well I think he's arguing that pandering for votes doesn't mean Hillary is not racist.  Further, he's trying to argue that Hillary is part of a long tradition of enduring Democrat racism in this country, which has not evolved at all over the course of history, such that Hillary holds personal as well as collective guilt.  Beyond this, Trump is not doing or saying anything more egregious than, say, Andrew Jackson's systematic genocides, ergo his "racism" is normal, just business as usual.

It's really the most fantastically audacious attempt at drawing equivalency and normalizing Trymp I think I've witnessed this election cycle.    Trump's racism is normal, as its certainly not beyond the extremes of our 200 year history, and since Hillary is inheriting this past, some of which is on the Dem party, she is guilty of those historical crimes and positions too.  They are the same and racism is no more present in Trump's campaign than hers.    I mean, this is pretty remarkable.