US Election: Saint Bernard the obstinant

[TrackerNeil]

48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which could be problematic. Younger people who haven't heard about the whole ordeal before likely won't know that the accusation has been widely discredited.

I don't think that will matter. I find that, in general, the accusation is remembered long after it has been refuted--assuming, of course, that anyone cared in the first place. Nobody inclined to vote Democrat cared much back in the 90s, and I imagine even fewer will matter today. But maybe you are right. Maybe there is a giant crowd of millenials just itching to revisit the a 20-year-old right-wing pit of bullshit.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I don't think that will matter. I find that, in general, the accusation is remembered long after it has been refuted--assuming, of course, that anyone cared in the first place. Nobody inclined to vote Democrat cared much back in the 90s, and I imagine even fewer will matter today. But maybe you are right. Maybe there is a giant crowd of millenials just itching to revisit the a 20-year-old right-wing pit of bullshit.

Again, this is not about creating large scale shifts in the electorate. It's about chipping away support for Clinton here and there among her likely voters. These type of attacks are geared to get people like Drew to stay home.

ETA:

On the flip side, the oppo research on Trump is starting to flow in, and holy bleep, he's said some dumb things in the past. Besides praising both Clintons hundreds of times over the last 20 years, including saying Bill is the best living president as recently as 2015, here's this gem:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/19/politics/donald-trump-2006-hopes-real-estate-market-crashes/

[Guy Kilmore]

14 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

I voted for Sanders, as did my wife (and she donated to him too). 

And I have lost patience with the increasingly shrill and conspiracy-inventing Berners, and with Bernie's own vanity and counterproductive attitude. I'm tired of him complaining about the rules of a campaign process that were written down and known before he ever registered to run, and his attempt to de-legitimize a process that he signed up to participate in. I'm tired of him claiming to Represent the People when fewer people have voted for him and his biggest victories come from goddamn democracy-suffocating caucuses. The candidate and the campaign have lost my faith. If my state's primary were held today, I'd probably vote for Clinton.

I will say I'm pretty much at the same place.  It's amazing how I have gotten actively pushed away.

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

And here we go again.  'Internal dissent,' even justified, equals 'treason to the party,' and by extension, the country. 

This type of vindictiveness solves nothing, and brings no benefit. Quite the opposite.

It isn't internal dissent. He isn't a Democrat. He is an independent. The Democrats have given him chair positions due to his tenure but they were done specifically when he was working in concert with the party.

This isn't vindictiveness. This is Sanders making a deal 16 years ago as an independent and not living up to his side of the deal.

[alguien]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Here's a good example of the kind of doublethink that Sanders has gotten people to show. So Sanders won Washington overwhelmingly, right? Well, only 230k people voted. 

In the primary ballot - which doesn't count, but is mailed to everyone's house and is an open primary - 650k voted, and Clinton won. 

 

I fucking knew this would happen. One more example of how bullshit caucus's are. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Again, this is not about creating large scale shifts in the electorate. It's about chipping away support for Clinton here and there among her likely voters. These type of attacks are geared to get people like Drew to stay home.

I don't even think it's that sophisticated, honestly. It's not an original thought, but for me, these attacks are because Trump believes that personal attacks = strength and strength = the primary Presidential qualification. So do a lot of his voters.

So Trump will hit Clinton with everything and anything that comes to mind. Old, new, true, false, fair, unfair, it makes no difference. The point is not the substance or even the success of the attack. The point is simply to attack. Not just to damage his opponent, but to bolster himself.

Remember, we're dealing here with a guy whose playbook opens with 'find childish nickname for opponent, repeat it on Twitter over and over again'. He gets a lot of votes out of being a bully. He will continue to be one.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, mormont said:

I don't even think it's that sophisticated, honestly. It's not an original thought, but for me, these attacks are because Trump believes that personal attacks = strength and strength = the primary Presidential qualification. So do a lot of his voters.

So Trump will hit Clinton with everything and anything that comes to mind. Old, new, true, false, fair, unfair, it makes no difference. The point is not the substance or even the success of the attack. The point is simply to attack. Not just to damage his opponent, but to bolster himself.

Remember, we're dealing here with a guy whose playbook opens with 'find childish nickname for opponent, repeat it on Twitter over and over again'. He gets a lot of votes out of being a bully. He will continue to be one.

You could very well be right. I was thinking more from a campaign strategy perspective, but Trump himself likely thinks the way you've laid it out.

[DireWolfSpirit]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

The possibility of voting for Jill Stein this year has been mentioned on this thread, and she is the candidate of the Green Party. The Green Party would certainly seem to be an alternative for people who want to build up a new party to the left of the Democrats.

http://www.gp.org/

^^^ This. Heres Jill Stein announcing her 2016 Pres. candidacy for the Green Party on Democracy Now- 

 

[Mexal]

Not sure I saw it posted but it looks like Paul Ryan is going to endorse Trump. Not a surprise since it was only a matter of time but it cracks me up when politicians put unity ahead of their beliefs. 

[Kalbear]

10 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I'm with ThinkerX, it's really hard to try and see both sides without being slapped around by the polarized notions of either side of this argument. Every question, comment, line of discussion is met with "Yeah. No." or "Yeah, I don't see this." Or whatever. Complete dismissiveness of the other viewpoint, and because of this we have a real shot at President Trump. I don't see this polarization changing at this point. It has only gotten worse over the last few months.

How is stating facts being dismissive of another viewpoint? Should we not correct people when they're factually wrong? Heck, are you saying that we shouldn't disagree with others? 

Like, you're stating that people want Sanders to just...disappear. And maybe some do. But what the objections that people in this thread have been talking about is Sanders being an ass about the legitimacy of the primary process. 

[Martell Spy]

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435805/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-why-hillary-is-even-worse-doesnt-cut-it

Why ‘Hillary Is Even Worse’ Doesn’t Cut It

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

I don't even think it's that sophisticated, honestly. It's not an original thought, but for me, these attacks are because Trump believes that personal attacks = strength and strength = the primary Presidential qualification. So do a lot of his voters.

So Trump will hit Clinton with everything and anything that comes to mind. Old, new, true, false, fair, unfair, it makes no difference. The point is not the substance or even the success of the attack. The point is simply to attack. Not just to damage his opponent, but to bolster himself.

Remember, we're dealing here with a guy whose playbook opens with 'find childish nickname for opponent, repeat it on Twitter over and over again'. He gets a lot of votes out of being a bully. He will continue to be one.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has done some great analysis on Trump's seemingly compulsive bullying behavior, especially how he attacks women. I'm posting from my phone so excerpting is difficult, but it is definitely worth a read. Midway through the piece, Marshall also links to a column he wrote in January called "Triumph of the Will," which was one of the first things I read that zeroed in on his "dominance politics." Also worth a read.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-trumpian-song-of-gender-violence

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

All the swear words......

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/25/politics/state-department-report-faults-clinton-over-email-use/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/state-department-hillary-clinton-emails.html?_r=0

There is a lot to digest, but there isn't any way to positively spin this. Here is probably the  worst part:

Quote

Mrs. Clinton and her aides have played down the inquiries, saying that she would cooperate with investigators to put the email issue behind her. Even so, through her lawyers, she declined to be interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general as part of his review. So did several of her senior aides.

 

[Kalbear]

It's also not particularly news at this point. We already knew that her use of private email servers was inappropriate due to how the archiving was handled, and that's been the case for 2 years now. We knew this because it was functionally the same as the other SoS behavior, and they were dinged in a similar way. 

It's still not a criminal trial. It's still not even a criminal charge. And it's (most importantly) not stating at all that she inappropriately handled classified data.

It does suck, I'll grant you. I just don't see it as particularly different than anything else we've seen about it.

[mormont]

Of course, the flip side of what I said above is that Trump's constant and indiscriminate personal attacks may tend to blunt the actual impact of any genuine scandal around Clinton, such as the emails.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

You're missing the point Kal. She's been caught in several lies. And this time it can't be written off as some right wing BS accusation. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You're missing the point Kal. She's been caught in several lies. And this time it can't be written off as some right wing BS accusation. 

I guess I am missing the point. We already knew she was lying about it. It already wasn't a right wing BS accusation. I guess if you're talking about pure spin this adds a bit more, but it doesn't change much about what I know about it - which was that it was a shady thing, it wasn't done particularly on the record, and that I still don't understand the major motivation for it.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Not sure I saw it posted but it looks like Paul Ryan is going to endorse Trump. Not a surprise since it was only a matter of time but it cracks me up when politicians put unity ahead of their beliefs.

Mexal,

So, by that logic the Bernie or Bust folks should stick to their guns?

[DanteGabriel]

The Ryan endorsement news seems to be premature.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/paul-ryan-endorse-trump-trump-senior-level-campaign/story?id=39356743

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

You know I've never read Mein Kampf before but I found a copy on the free table in the library last night so I picked it up.  It is scary to see how close Hitler is to Trump's blowhardedness.