U.S. Politics: From Russia, With Love

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Talk about a complete messaging failure by the Democratic party.

 

Kind of a microcosm of everything wrong w/ the Democratic party.  

They are just the worst marketers.

[aceluby]

Anyone see the new Trump ad?  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/us/politics/trump-ad-100-days.html?_r=0

Quote

President Trump on Monday released a triumphant campaign advertisement declaring his first 100 days in office a success, and branding news media that have reported otherwise as “FAKE NEWS.”

Whoever thought this would be a good PR move should be fired.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Kind of a microcosm of everything wrong w/ the Democratic party.  

They are just the worst marketers.

Seriously! One of President Obama's biggest mistakes was refusing to "spike the football" with regards to the economy. We all know that if the roles were reversed the Republicans would have acted like the last 8 years were an economic miracle. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I've read serious historians who thought that if the North-South divide had come to a head a bit earlier that Andrew Jackson was so well respected nationally that he could have brokered a deal that averted war.  Such a hypothetical deal would undoubtedly be papering over the divisions regarding slavery/abolitionism, rather than actually solving them, and a Civil War probably would have just happened in the 1870s instead, but whatever.  On the sliding scale of stupid things Trump has said, this is pretty damn low on the list. 

That is ignoring history and it is very high on the list.'

Also by the end of his term the country had plunged into the worst Panic / Depression / Financial Crisis, and the longest one, until the Great Depression of the 1930's.  This truly erased his popularity in the north. 

This silly theory ignores that much if not most of the political scene from even during his administrations was about brokering deals to appease the Slaveocracy.  But these people were of the sort that if they didn't get all their own way would send the country into war.  There was NO NEGOTIATING with their sort.  But that's all politics was during all these years from 1837 > 1860, attempts to broker deals -- and even when deals were made the slaveocracy broke them.

[Kalbear]

Please for the love of fucking god do not turn this into a civil war argument

please

let us have one nice thing in 2017

please

[Fez]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

Kind of a microcosm of everything wrong w/ the Democratic party.  

They are just the worst marketers.

They did pretty well in 2012, successfully tying Romney to his primary season stances and not letting him pivot towards his moderate record as governor. 

But it seems that was a one-off. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Fez said:

They did pretty well in 2012, successfully tying Romney to his primary season stances and not letting him pivot towards his moderate record as governor. 

But it seems that was a one-off. 

Part of it also is simply that no one was used to someone so brazenly and openly lying about their goals vs. their actual policy. No one. And fighting it using the old tactics failed. That's sort of a problem, especially when faced with someone with no actual political record.

In 4 years, hopefully that'll change; you can point at the 0.7% economy growth or the lack of improvement in wages or losses in medical coverage or other horrible things as examples of shitty policy in action, and showcase how said policies didn't do squat for the middle class and poor. 

Though I doubt it'll matter much, honestly.

[aceluby]

3 minutes ago, Fez said:

They did pretty well in 2012, successfully tying Romney to his primary season stances and not letting him pivot towards his moderate record as governor. 

But it seems that was a one-off. 

The self incriminating 47% video did most of the leg work IMO

[all swedes are racist]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Seriously! One of President Obama's biggest mistakes was refusing to "spike the football" with regards to the economy. We all know that if the roles were reversed the Republicans would have acted like the last 8 years were an economic miracle. 

Lmao 

https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/858452291707392000

they have a whole series of these

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

Lmao 

https://twitter.com/foxnews/status/858452291707392000

they have a whole series of these

 

Fair and balanced (to sexual predators). 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Fair and balanced (to sexual predators). 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/foxsimpson1.png

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Part of it also is simply that no one was used to someone so brazenly and openly lying about their goals vs. their actual policy. No one. And fighting it using the old tactics failed. That's sort of a problem, especially when faced with someone with no actual political record.

In 4 years, hopefully that'll change; you can point at the 0.7% economy growth or the lack of improvement in wages or losses in medical coverage or other horrible things as examples of shitty policy in action, and showcase how said policies didn't do squat for the middle class and poor. 

Though I doubt it'll matter much, honestly.

It won't do anything, especially when on the other side, Trump is taking out Op Eds in local newspapers, putting $1.5m behind an advertisement and Fox News is sending out tweets with just job growth numbers for first 100 days of the last 4 presidents without any context. Fact is, Trump and team is infinitely better at selling bullshit then the Dems/media are at selling the truth. In an age of hyper partisanship, the echo chambers are strong.

[Zorral]

nazi cadres up in Union Square creating violence at the peacheful May Day protests.  Squadrons of police helicopters blanketing the city.

 

 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Please for the love of fucking god do not turn this into a civil war argument

please

let us have one nice thing in 2017

please

Trump did it, not us.  We have the right -- the DUTY -- the OBLIGATION -- to call him OUT.  Because every damned word that came out of his little fingers was a lie and stupid and not documented history.  For one thing -- Jackson was not only a slaveowner, he was a SLAVE TRADER (people, even historians, really try to pretend that didn't happen but the dox are there and easily seen by all of us).

This is STILL the Civil War, all the same issues and ideologies in conflict. Just this time not clearly regionally divided.

You cannot keep the Civil War and slavery and all those issues out of these issues because they go back that far, even into colonial times, as anyone who knows our history knows.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This is STILL the Civil War, all the same issues and ideologies in conflict. Just this time not clearly regionally divided.

But it isn't. It's not even close. You can't honestly compare the horror of slave ownership to what is taking place today.

[all swedes are racist]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Fair and balanced (to sexual predators). 

aside from the fact they only show republicans tend to leave the economy worse than they found it, the best one was "average hourly" wages that aren't adjusted for inflation 

[denstorebog]

Well, I'm getting ready for some popcorn-munching good times. This WaPo article posits that the budget deal came about because Republicans are now so divided (intra-Congress and vs. the administration) that it's basically more attractive to work with Democrats, giving Dems a real position of power. It also details how Trump's agenda has in general become harder to negotiate down the line because of this deal.

What's interesting is that that article was headlined, in red, on Drudge. The administration narrative that Trump single-handedly got government rolling again is not catching on with the base. I'm guessing that we're one more Congressional fuck-up like, oh say, a failed Zombie Trumpcare 3.0 vote, from Trump starting to really go after Congress Republicans on Twitter. Either because he needs to in order to distance himself from the barrage of incompetence, or because he's angry angry Trump on any given day.

Which will only escalate the antagonism between Trump and Congress, making it nearly impossible to see them fighting for his more outlandish election promises in the next budget talks half a year from now.

Which in turn makes it hard for him to maintain his alpha president image.

All of this just in time for a 2018 massacre. Can you tell I'm being positive?

[mormont]

19 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Figured I move this comment here. I'm not sure why you're saying this, it seems pretty obvious that a great number of white working class voters from the Midwest supported Sanders in the primary and ended up voting from Trump. 

'Seems pretty obvious' =/= 'is actually true'.

From what I've read, most of those white working class voters were in the upper earning brackets of the working class, still had jobs (although they may have lived in communities which had seen high unemployment) and were mostly motivated by race or racial issues. None of these factors suggest that these voters are a great fit with Sanders' message. If they voted for Sanders in the primary, I would suggest it was out of distaste for Clinton. I'd further suggest that a lot of them would be likely to have deserted Sanders for Trump in the election. Trump's appeal wasn't based on rational self-interest: there's no evidence to suggest that Sanders' message would have inoculated these voters against that.

16 hours ago, Fez said:

Talk about a complete messaging failure by the Democratic party.

I don't put this down to a messaging failure. This is about cognitive dissonance. Those particular voters are strongly motivated to believe that Trump's policies are good for the working class and the Dem's policies are bad. That way their vote makes sense and they did the right thing.

Messaging failures happen when psychological factors like this aren't taken into account.

[ThinkerX]

I have been wondering for a while now.

Trump cares *nothing* about Party affiliation.  He cares nothing about what bills do, only winning.

So, if the republicans cannot help Trump 'win,' - again content doesn't matter - he very well could turn to the democratic party, and try to force some sort of weird hybrid deal.  That might get a bill or three passed - but a lot of republicans will see such a move as 'treason.'

And right now, republican obstinacy is the main thing keeping the various Trump investigations at bay.  If the relevant republicans were to get ticked off enough to stop blocking those investigations... 

[Fez]

4 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I have been wondering for a while now.

Trump cares *nothing* about Party affiliation.  He cares nothing about what bills do, only winning.

So, if the republicans cannot help Trump 'win,' - again content doesn't matter - he very well could turn to the democratic party, and try to force some sort of weird hybrid deal.  That might get a bill or three passed - but a lot of republicans will see such a move as 'treason.'

And right now, republican obstinacy is the main thing keeping the various Trump investigations at bay.  If the relevant republicans were to get ticked off enough to stop blocking those investigations... 

Trump may at some point want to do something like that, but its doubtful any of his advisors do, so its not likely he'll make an attempt. If he does make an attempt, Democrats probably aren't interested in handing any political victories to Trump; even if it advances their own policy goals (They've learned well the lessons of Mitch McConnell). And even if Democrats were interested, Ryan and McConnell decide what gets brought to the floor, and they aren't going to bring up Democratic bills; even if Trump likes them. Theoretically, Republican members could join with Democrats to force votes; but that goes way beyond a bipartisan deal, that's straight up turning against the party. And I don't see any Republicans doing that, even if its what Trump wants.

If Democrats take the House in the midterms, its possibly their thinking will chance (and they would at least control one chamber floor and could start jamming the Senate). But its more likely they'll want to just spend two years drowning the White House in subpoenas in preparation for the 2020 election.