U.S. Elections: Trumpsterfire Unchained

[Ariadne23]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The latest shoe appears to be dropping. The New York Times has interviews with two women who say Trump inappropriately touched them.

 

Two more, that is, in addition to Temple Taggert and Jill Harth from the story the NY Times published back in May. And if there are 4, there are probably at least a dozen more, probably even that the Times is already aware of but couldn't corroborate to the same extent. Yet.

[Kalbear]

Another one from Palm Beach. 

The NY Times ones are pretty well vetted as far as these go - multiple witnesses corroborating that this person said these things years ago, times and places that it happened, ability to look at records like flight manifests and employment data. Dunno about the Palm Beach one. My suspicion is that other papers are looking into them right now and vetting to make sure they are airtight. I'd be shocked if WaPo doesn't have at least one story in the next few days. 

[Ariadne23]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Another one from Palm Beach. 

The NY Times ones are pretty well vetted as far as these go - multiple witnesses corroborating that this person said these things years ago, times and places that it happened, ability to look at records like flight manifests and employment data. Dunno about the Palm Beach one. 

The photographer she was working for recalls her contemporaneous report of the groping at an event with The Orange One and Ray Charles. There are photos from the event taken by that photographer of Donald and Ray Charles.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think there's a danger of hypocrisy here with Trump the rapist vs Bill the rapist, and by extension Hillary the rape obstruction of justice collaborator and victim abuser and therefore a being of purest evil who should be in prison not the White House

If we have no prosecutable case for Bill, and therefore no prosecutable case for Hillary, thus a presumption of innocence, then the same should apply to Trump. Accusations doth not a criminal make.

I think people need to just stick to what Trump can be proven, or rather has been proven, to have said and done. If there's a legit case for him to answer re sexual assault or harassment, then let the proper authorities investigate and bring charges if the evidence stacks up. And if there isn't enough to charge him people should afford him the same presumption of innocence as would apply to anyone else.  I personally might believe he's more likely to have done these things than not (I haven't come to a conclusion on that yet), but I'm not going to call him a rapist or guilty of sexual assault unless he's been convicted.

[Castel]

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

This is now their response. They're such full of shit. 

 

Full of bullshit, to be more exact. Fareed Zakaria was right to quote On Bullshit. At this point we're partly beyond truth and falsehood. 

Like, at least Giuliani is somewhat conventional in that he's fucking lying when he says he never saw Hillary after 9/11.

When Trump surrogates try to deflect by claiming  'Hollywood rape culture" and 50 Shades of Grey influenced him (in 2005 and at 50 years old)...they're bullshitting. Truth doesn't matter. Falsity doesn't matter. It's all about spinning the most bullshit yarn you can.

[MerenthaClone]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think there's a danger of hypocrisy here with Trump the rapist vs Bill the rapist, and by extension Hillary the rape obstruction of justice collaborator and victim abuser and therefore a being of purest evil who should be in prison not the White House

If we have no prosecutable case for Bill, and therefore no prosecutable case for Hillary, thus a presumption of innocence, then the same should apply to Trump. Accusations doth not a criminal make.

I think people need to just stick to what Trump can be proven, or rather has been proven, to have said and done. If there's a legit case for him to answer re sexual assault or harassment, then let the proper authorities investigate and bring charges if the evidence stacks up. And if there isn't enough to charge him people should afford him the same presumption of innocence as would apply to anyone else.  I personally might believe he's more likely to have done these things than not (I haven't come to a conclusion on that yet), but I'm not going to call him a rapist or guilty of sexual assault unless he's been convicted.

When he corroborates accusations of sexual assault with "I walk into the locker rooms for a teen beauty pageant while said 15 year olds are changing because I can" and "I grab women by the pussy and they can't stop me because I'm me" I think there's a slight difference there.  

[Kalbear]

I think the other way.

I think that it's likely Bill Clinton did at the very least assault at least one woman, and certainly had multiple affairs. It may not be provable in a court of law, but it's certainly reasonable to think.

I think Trump assaulted many women. And didn't think twice about it.

That said, Bill Clinton assaulting anyone doesn't matter particularly much, because we aren't electing him. 

[Castel]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

I think the other way.

I think that it's likely Bill Clinton did at the very least assault at least one woman, and certainly had multiple affairs. It may not be provable in a court of law, but it's certainly reasonable to think.

I think Trump assaulted many women. And didn't think twice about it.

That said, Bill Clinton assaulting anyone doesn't matter particularly much, because we aren't electing him. 

Yes but the charge is and always has been that Hillary provided support to him as he assaulted women and wriggled out of the consequences. 

That is a serious allegation and really does undercut any of the attacks on Trump if it is true. Of course, parsing what "support" is, which can range from "actually helped attack these women" to "stayed with Bill and gave him the benefit of the doubt", depending on how you lean.

 

 

[Shryke]

5 hours ago, Fez said:

I don't think the current Democratic coalition is going to absorb the white nationalists, but I could see them absorbing the US Chamber of Commerce and various additional suburban voters. Not a ton of voters, but a lot of money. And that money would have the potential to influence Democratic policy, especially on economic stuff. Quite possibly enough to turn off the Sanders/Warren wing of the party. 

If that happened, the most likely thing they do is trying making a left-wing tea party to keep Democrats more liberal; but if that fails, its not impossible to imagine them eventually creating some populist chimera party with the white nationalists and/or evangelics; who never cared much about economic policy in the first place.

It seems implausible, but so did the idea in 1960 that the South would abandon the Democratic party within a couple years

How? Why?

Their views are not compatible with the current direction of the party or it's coalition. They are drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub types after all.

And there's no way the far left makes a coalition with the populist elements on the right. For one, those populist elements are built on white nationalism and evangelical lines which are anathema to the far left's social policy. Like, even when Sanders' base wasn't attracting the minority vote and in some rare cases actually antagonising it, they were condescending, not racist.

 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I've been thinking a lot about what a different two-party system would look like, and how the Trump alt right crapsack coalition could be absorbed.

What I've figured is that they'll go entirely for white populism. Go for popular tax cuts that boost the poor across the board and more entitlement programs which are universally pretty liked. Tax the rich, because why not? Go for anti-immigration (across the board, not naming any nationality), go for anti-trade across the board, go for distinct lack of interventionism across the board. Don't care that much about criminal justice reform but do care about decriminalizing some drugs, especially given the opioid addiction. Attack wall street heavily, attack banks heavily. Promise to keep borders secure and safe and staying out of the business of others, and point to decades of interventionist disasters. Split the difference on things like abortion in the party too, if you can - have a lot of pro-lifers and pro-choice folks and point out that you can respect both. Probably go a bit anti-gay, though only a smidgen - denounce explicit laws designed to discriminate, but also denounce court overreach. 

It wouldn't be the republican party as it exists right now, but you could build it from the current ashes without too much of difficulty, I suspect.

The Democrats would lose a lot of their ability to fight on policy (tax cuts and the like), they would lose a lot of their ability to fight on entitlement, and they would have to wage a war on saying why immigration is good, why globalism is good, and why intervention is good. 

But everything you describe here is just the populist wing of the Republican party already, so there's no realignment necessary, and that, as Trump is showcasing, doesn't have the legs to win a Presidency.

On top of that you can't "split the difference" on abortion, that's what the evangelicals are in it for. And you can't get the white nationalists on board for more entitlement programs across the board because they don't want that money going to blacks and other minorities. That's, like, how the GOP attracted those votes in the first place. Welfare queens and all that. Recast social programs as a thing that helps minorities and suddenly poor white now-Republicans hated social programs. And none of this stuff I'm talking about above has gone away.

 

Obama has managed to show a fairly solidified coalition for the Democratic party. One that is now possible thanks to demographic changes in the US. The problem is all on the GOP side where their always shaky coalition has begun to fray, in large part because the people running the thing have never managed to convince the rest of the base to get on board with the intellectual conservative agenda. But there's little reason or way for the Democrats to go about absorbing these groups because they all fundamentally disagree on fairly core tenets of the Democratic party coalition, specifically either social liberalism, progressive economics or racial inclusiveness. A party built on minorities and progressive social and economic policy is not gonna be picking these voters up easily.

The economic populism of the left is not powerful enough to make big waves and not amenable to an alliance with the socially or racially regressive elements that are dissatisfied with the GOP.

And just because both parties have more populist factions doesn't mean those populists have similar views.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Castel said:

Yes but the charge is and always has been that Hillary provided support to him as he assaulted women and wriggled out of the consequences. 

Right - and that is a problem. At the same time there is almost no credible evidence for this whatsoever. I'm happy to hang that charge on Clinton if more people come forward, but so far there's basically nothing at all. 

 

[Castel]

Now this shit. Not near as bad as the Pussy tapes but just reinforcing him as just..a helplessly misogynistic creep, which is what he is.

 

 

 

[Dr. Pepper]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think the other way.

I think that it's likely Bill Clinton did at the very least assault at least one woman, and certainly had multiple affairs. It may not be provable in a court of law, but it's certainly reasonable to think.

I think Trump assaulted many women. And didn't think twice about it.

That said, Bill Clinton assaulting anyone doesn't matter particularly much, because we aren't electing him. 

We may not be electing Bill, but we are electing someone who has told us that he will play a major role in her administration.  As such, it matters and it matters a lot.  It's a hypocrisy in the Democratic party, always has been.  

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Shryke said:

But everything you describe here is just the populist wing of the Republican party already, so there's no realignment necessary, and that, as Trump is showcasing, doesn't have the legs to win a Presidency.

On top of that you can't "split the difference" on abortion, that's what the evangelicals are in it for. And you can't get the white nationalists on board for more entitlement programs across the board because they don't want that money going to blacks and other minorities. That's, like, how the GOP attracted those votes in the first place. Welfare queens and all that. Recast social programs as a thing that helps minorities and suddenly poor white now-Republicans hated social programs. And none of this stuff I'm talking about above has gone away.

 

It's not just the populist wing of the Republicans. It's that combined with a tax plan and benefits to the poor - something Trump doesn't have - and framing things based on nationalism, not racism. Again, a lot of people support nixing trade deals on both sides. A lot of people support stopping immigration, period. A lot of people support no intervention, period. Trump isn't running on no intervention, he's not running on stopping all immigration, and he's certainly not running on taxing the rich. 

And yeah, you can split the difference on abortion because as has been shown the evangelicals...really aren't. They're a small fragment of the Republican base, and they didn't help with Trump one way or another and are, in fact, fleeing Trump right now more than any other group. 

You don't have to make the white nationalists your bosom buddies like Trump has - you simply have to give them something that works. Giving them no immigration is a good thing that you can couch in other ways. The important thing is to make sure that you're not supporting them explicitly, because that's precisely what scares away other groups. They can support you, but not too loudly. This was something Republicans got right for a long time previously. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Dr. Pepper said:

We may not be electing Bill, but we are electing someone who has told us that he will play a major role in her administration.  As such, it matters and it matters a lot.  It's a hypocrisy in the Democratic party, always has been.  

I think that's reasonable. I would hope that Hillary will not be putting Bill into the administration much at all any more - especially now that she has Warren and Sanders with specific personnel requests that we expect are the ones she granted in exchange for their support. 

[Ariadne23]

6 minutes ago, Castel said:

Yes but the charge is and always has been that Hillary provided support to him as he assaulted women and wriggled out of the consequences. 

As despicable as that would be if true, and I tend to think there as at least some truth to it, what Hillary is accused of is not illegal. 

Beyond that, neither Hillary nor Bill are on tape asserting some entitlement to assault women because of their stardom.

But yeah, all things being equal, I'd prefer neither member of the First Couple be a sexual predator. Still, I'm hardly going to shut up about *women being sexually assaulted* because it might not be politically expedient, FFS.

[The Anti-Targ]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think the other way.

I think that it's likely Bill Clinton did at the very least assault at least one woman, and certainly had multiple affairs. It may not be provable in a court of law, but it's certainly reasonable to think.

I think Trump assaulted many women. And didn't think twice about it.

That said, Bill Clinton assaulting anyone doesn't matter particularly much, because we aren't electing him. 

Yes, but that ignores the accusation that Hillary harassed and publicly attacked people she knew to be victims of a sexual assault by Bill. That is very serious shit, and if I were able to vote in this election and I thought that was a reasonably likely to be true accusation I almost certainly would chose not to vote at all as there is no worthy candidate in 2016.  If Hillary victimised a woman who was the victim of a sex crime then that is unforgivable and Trump correctly asserted that she should be in prison and she should not be president. Neither should Trump.

At this point I have no confidence that Bill did or did not commit a sex crime (or any crime for that matter), so I give Hillary the benefit of the doubt that she was attacking women who she felt wronged by as people who freely chose to participate in Bill's unfaithful behaviour. Being angry at "the other women" is pretty reasonable. And then for one to have the gall to (in Hillary's eyes) falsely accuse Bill of a sex crime is worse still. But people are free to believe Bill's guilt is beyond doubt as is Hillary's complicity in covering it up and victimising the victims. If someone sincerely believes that to the the case then there is something wrong with that person if they are intending to vote for Hillary. Such people should, with a clear conscience, just sit this election out.

[Kalbear]

Quote

Yes, but that ignores the accusation that Hillary harassed and publicly attacked people she knew to be victims of a sexual assault by Bill. That is very serious shit, and if I were able to vote in this election and I thought that was a reasonably likely to be true accusation I almost certainly would chose not to vote at all as there is no worthy candidate in 2016.  If Hillary victimised a woman who was the victim of a sex crime then that is unforgivable and Trump correctly asserted that she should be in prison and she should not be president. Neither should Trump.

It doesn't ignore it. It gives it less credibility. That's all.

I'm saying, simply, take the actual evidence and conversations presented and make your own judgments. Broaddrick's are the most credible of the lot, but at best all that had was apparently Hillary coming up to her and saying 'Bill and I appreciate your continued support' - and nothing else. 

Which is CREEPY AS FUCK. 

But that story has a lot of holes in it. And, as pointed out by Ariadne, is not actually against the law. 

[The Anti-Targ]

18 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

When he corroborates accusations of sexual assault with "I walk into the locker rooms for a teen beauty pageant while said 15 year olds are changing because I can" and "I grab women by the pussy and they can't stop me because I'm me" I think there's a slight difference there.  

I haven't listened to the audio with any great attention, but I thought he said he could do those things, not that he actually did those things. But sure, it demonstrates an attitude towards women that makes it quite likely that there's merit to the accusations women have brought against him. There is a slight difference, sure, but not a sufficiently material difference that Trump can be convicted in the court of public opinion and Bill (and by extension Hillary for her part) shouldn't.

[Ariadne23]

7 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If someone sincerely believes that to the the case then there is something wrong with that person if they are intending to vote for Hillary. Such people should, with a clear conscience, just sit this election out.

My guess is that she probably believed Bill's accusers were women he had affairs with who were seeking some kind of leverage or felt jilted. Which is terrible. To borrow Madeleine Albright's phrase, there's a special place in hell for women like that. I wish I had better choices. But this year, I kid you not, if Donald Rumsfeld was the only thing standing between Donald Trump and the White House, I would show up, hold my nose, and vote for that war criminal for the sake of the very future of the republic because I believe him to be at least partially sane.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I haven't listened to the audio with any great attention, but I thought he said he could do those things, not that he actually did those things. But sure, it demonstrates an attitude towards women that makes it quite likely that there's merit to the accusations women have brought against him. There is a slight difference, sure, but not a sufficiently material difference that Trump can be convicted in the court of public opinion and Bill (and by extension Hillary for her part) shouldn't.

Multiple beauty contestants - some as young as 15 - have stated that he did this on multiple occasions. Another alleged that he kissed her, repeatedly. 

One big difference I can see is that many of Bill Clinton's attackers were heavily interviewed, vetted, and found to not be credible - failing factual data (such as the infamous Flowers 'he has a distinct mark' thing) or corroborating witnesses placing them at different places when they claimed things. Like I said, I'm totally willing to believe that Bill assaulted women - but there is a very remarkable difference between the cases at this point.