u.s. politics: sundowning on the american empire

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Yeah, that's cool.  But I'm looking less into how it affects group think and more about how you actually target spending campaign money.  Is there a 'money ball' type movement yet?  I am a complete ignoramus on this and am wondering, what's the breakdown of how campaign finds are spent?  what's the metric for say how a dollar is spent in various ways is 'worth' an electoral vote?  (Thinking about a baseball players WAR here) if the foundation is built on landlines and tv ads you might as well recruit draft picks from the retirement home)

Honestly there is no singular clear cut answer. Different strategies work in different places and for different types of campaigns. And that’s before we get into the inner workings of all the different state laws. For example, in 2016 Clinton and Sanders had vastly different strategies, and yet both of them were able to raise a ton of money. Really a candidate can or cannot not raise funds, and if they can achieve the former, the methodology might not be all that important so long as it aligns with the candidate’s message.

15 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

This is the narrative and I think it's dead wrong.  You're not going to win MI and PA and WI by appealing to centrists and courting Obama-Trump voters.  You're going to win thenm by turning out the Dem base, and young people.  I'm a broken record in this but this idea that Biden is going to deliver the Midwest is fucking bonkers.

Yes, you can. Again with broken records, we lost those states by 80,000 votes. Just having a likable candidate alone could be enough to make up that gap. And there are more votes in the middle than there are at the fringes. If the base doesn’t turn out for Biden because he’s not perfect, they deserve four more years of Trump. 2020 is not a wise year to seek purity.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

You guys live in a bubble of radicalism.

And what about your bubble, the one that says we cannot limit the guns you own because you’re afraid of roaming hordes of barbarians, or the one that says you’re afraid of getting punched, therefore you need a gun on you at all times to have equalizing force?

Seriously, quit being a coward and go take a Taekwondo class. But make sure you spar with the children, you know, for the purposes of equalizing force.

4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And as Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have pointed out so eloquently, academic institutions have radicalized dramatically in recent decades to the point of becoming bubbles of left wing extremism within broader society.

This is such a major canard. As someone with a poli sci degree from a very liberal D-1, R-1 university, I can say from my experience that the only professors that injected their politics into the lessons were the conservative ones. The moderates and liberals took pride in not showing their hand during lectures. Same goes for the psychology department and all the liberal arts courses I took outside of maybe a few history classes.  

2 hours ago, Raja said:

I see people are talking about Shapiro's 'intellect' - I will *always* post this when that goon is brought up ( it's only about 30 seconds)

Edit: Here's the full video, for people that are curious

You clearly lack the capitalist spirit. Buy the land on the cheap when it’s devalued, build hotel resorts with underwater quarters and stiff the construction crews Trump style, and when the s*** hits the fan on the environment, commit insurance fraud.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

Could be wrong, but I could have sworn he was like a Dallas-based douche.  Like an SMU douche or something.  Could be wrong.  Don't care as I know you do not as an anarchist, all due respect.  

You’re correct. He’s Boston born, raised in Dallas and schooled at UVA, UChi and flunked out of his PhD program at Duke.

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

A guy who thinks that students should avoid sociology, anthropology, and English lit because of neo-marxist corruption, and the guy who thinks that people will be able to sell their houses if sea level rises. Some real intellectual heavy weights there.

Funny, that was Spencer’s major.

[Martell Spy]

This is the shit conservatives would pull in previous eras. And it was effective. That of course was before the tiki-torch marching Nazis and the vicious murder of Heather Heyer and the government putting brown kids in cages.  We've gone as a country from questioning if white supremacy is that common to realizing it exists and questioning how much power the movement will gain and how much damage it will do to the country.

But, the gaslighting must continue, it is the Fox News bread and butter.

 

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Says White Supremacy Is a “Hoax” and a “Conspiracy Theory”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/fox-news-tucker-carlson-white-supremacy-hoax-conspiracy-theory.html

Quote

 

Days after a shooter walked into an El Paso Walmart fueled by a belief in white supremacy—complete with an online manifesto warning that white people in America were being replaced by foreigners—Fox News host Tucker Carlson decried the concept of white supremacy as a “hoax” and a “conspiracy theory” being pushed as a power grab by Democrats.
Carlson sneers at the prospect of white supremacy, confining his definition of it to those who are literal members of the KKK, which he says amount to a small portion of the country.

…the whole thing is a lie. If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It’s actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country was able to fit inside a college football stadium. I mean, seriously. This is a country where the average person is getting poorer and the suicide rate is spiking. White supremacy, that’s the problem. It’s a hoax. Just like the Russian hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That’s exactly what’s going on.

“They’re making this up,” he concluded. “It’s a talking point, which they are using to help them in this election cycle.”

 

 

[Kalbear]

59 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

FYI.  I haven’t seen anything from Harris in SC so far.  

You aren't her market. 

[Gaston de Foix]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

You aren't her market. 

He's a voter. That ought to be enough in an open primary state. 

[Maithanet]

Stock markets getting hammered again today, after a brief gain yesterday.  Looks like this trade war might be spinning out of control. 

Perhaps trade wars aren't so easy to win after all?  Who was it that said that again? 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Gaston de Foix said:

He's a voter. That ought to be enough in an open primary state. 

Right, she should definitely be working on convincing white conservative men to vote for a black woman instead of going to the various AA communities and churches and talking with them, and she should be doing that months before the election too.

Because I bet that a lot of white conservative men in the south are just lining up to vote for black women. 

[Zorral]

Anyone who thinks academia is a hot bed of radical left indoctrination hasn't been on a campus in years, if ever.  It's the 1 percenters who have been putting up the buildings, changing the curriculums and fostering the ridiculous economic theories as facts such as trickle down etc.  They have been buying the damned schools, sponsoring 'chairs' and 'think tanks' and 'fellowships.'  They own the sciences and technology.  The humanities are essentially gone from the curriculums everywhere.  Many smaller schools have eradicated English and Literature and History -- and particularly languages -- all together.

Students even at the best academic institutions these days, absolutely refuse to even read a book.  Books are gone from the library shelves.  The building instead is a vast study hall filled with terrified Asian students beavering away on their laptops, eating eating eating and drinking, and the smell of that food stinks up the place.

P.S.  If, indeed, Biden takes the nom, the VP choice truly matters.  But, this is a year, in which the running mate of whomever receives the Dem nom will matter.  There's a great field for VP, at least.

[Gaston de Foix]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Right, she should definitely be working on convincing white conservative men to vote for a black woman instead of going to the various AA communities and churches and talking with them, and she should be doing that months before the election too.

Because I bet that a lot of white conservative men in the south are just lining up to vote for black women. 

I'll let Ser Scott answer for his own views, but you could have made a similar argument about Obama and the Iowa caucus circa 2007.  Trump's presidency is an opportunity for Democrats to unify behind a candidate who has significant cross-over appeal, including to conservatives.  Unify and expand your coalition, and seek to divide your enemies seems pretty good politics to me.  Not saying it's easy, but it's worth the attempt. 

The country can and should reject Trump with an overwhelming mandate in 2020.  You should want that even if you are a die-hard liberal who wants as left-wing an administration as possible because all the policy objectives Democrats care about need legislative enactment by both houses and the sort of filibuster-proof majority that Obama commanded in 2009-2011.  You can and should write off the modern, diseased Republican party, which should be destroyed.  But don't write off conservatives.    

[Varysblackfyre321]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So - at a rough guess, merely for purposes of illustration - you have maybe 40% of the country supporting Trump/ Republican Party, maybe 10% undecided, maybe 30% supporting a moderate Democrat position and the remaining maybe 15-20% supporting the radical, socialist wing of the Democratic party.

Meh, Trump tends to be beaten by Sanders in a head to head match up-and I’m sure you’d count him amongst the “radical” “socialist” wing of the Democratic Party:https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html

I think you’re under the opposite extreme  unreasonable position of Moving left on any issue being an automatically winning strategy-that moving right is the way to win.

On 8/6/2019 at 7:47 AM, Free Northman Reborn said:

There’s already a law against murder.

So, making it harder for ex-felons to murder someone shouldn’t be done?

Hell using tat logic why require schools to do background checks on their staff? After all molesting children is illegal, so why check if a person whose applying to be a teacher at an elementary school has ever been to prison for committing lewd acts with minors? 

Why even have laws that bar those who’ve committed felonies from owning firearms if it’s just going to be neutered by virtue of it being legal for an unlicensed dealer at a gun show to sell firearms to a paranoid schizophrenic whose history of committing violent crimes? 

[DanteGabriel]

6 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

You can and should write off the modern, diseased Republican party, which should be destroyed.  But don't write off conservatives.    

Where are the conservatives who haven't tainted themselves through association with the diseased Republican Party? Are they hunkered down with martinis in George Will's basement?

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I'll let Ser Scott answer for his own views, but you could have made a similar argument about Obama and the Iowa caucus circa 2007.  Trump's presidency is an opportunity for Democrats to unify behind a candidate who has significant cross-over appeal, including to conservatives.  Unify and expand your coalition, and seek to divide your enemies seems pretty good politics to me.  Not saying it's easy, but it's worth the attempt. 

 

Iowa is different because it is first, and because their entire political system does it differently than anyone else because of it. Also, iowa is a closed caucus, so Obama didnt actually go appealing to white Male conservative voters. Try again. 

Obama, I'll note, specifically also went almost entirely for the AA population in South Carolina. So did Clinton in 2016. Harris during the primary isn't trying to build a grand coalition of voters across the aisle; she's trying to win the primary. 

[Zorral]

De Blasio's 'campaign' for the Dem nom -- 

I am still scratching my head about this decision, but maybe this article throws some light on it, or not.

Quote

Historically, presidential hopefuls have drafted off popularity at home to build a national profile. De Blasio has been trying the near-opposite, hoping — as our sitting president did, in his way — that a national audience will be less hostile than much of his own city. That hostility, less than two years after an easy re-election, is something of a paradox: At a time of general stability for New York, progressive ascendancy in the Democratic Party and furious opposition to President Trump across Blue America, why is the very liberal leader of the country’s very liberal largest city a reliable laugh line? How did he become such a disappointment? And is he, actually?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/magazine/mayor-bill-de-blasio-2020-campaign.html?

He's a big friend of Big Development and Big Biz, so I've never have liked him.  Every week of his second administrations seems to bring the revelation of yet another set of personal shenanigans by either his wife and / or himself with city money and resources, including ordering members of his tax-payer paid security detail to move his daughter's apartment content to a new living space -- and performed in the wee hours of darkness, for a single instance.  I listen to him pontificate about everything and mostly, honestly?, it's just another politico's word salad, without content, meaning or signification.

Which is why, listening to Warren, Booker, Castro, the Squad, talk, they are speaking coherent, meaningful language -- and it's nearly a SHOCK to hear such language coming out of a politican's mouth after all these decades of them, whatever political affiliation, whether local or national, just moving their mouths and having sound but no meaning.

[Gaston de Foix]

4 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Where are the conservatives who haven't tainted themselves through association with the diseased Republican Party? Are they hunkered down with martinis in George Will's basement?

There are far fewer elected officials than I would like.  But there are plenty of ordinary voters who voted Republican in 2016 and who Democrats should be trying to persuade to vote for them.  

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Iowa is different because it is first, and because their entire political system does it differently than anyone else because of it. Also, iowa is a closed caucus, so Obama didnt actually go appealing to white Male conservative voters. Try again. 

 Obama, I'll note, specifically also went almost entirely for the AA population in South Carolina. So did Clinton in 2016. Harris during the primary isn't trying to build a grand coalition of voters across the aisle; she's trying to win the primary. 

Your point was she should target the AA community in SC exclusively.  I'm not denying Iowa is different - I'm saying that slicing and dicing voters into white, male and conservative and writing that constituency off is not the ideal strategy for the SC open primary.  If for no other reason than because the many serving and retired members of the military living in SC deserve a commander in chief who is worthy of their service. 

Anyway, I'm curious to hear Ser Scott's view.  Would he vote for Kamala or any Democrat in the primary?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

53 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Stock markets getting hammered again today, after a brief gain yesterday.  Looks like this trade war might be spinning out of control. 

Perhaps trade wars aren't so easy to win after all?  Who was it that said that again? 

Throwback Wednesday?:

 

[DMC]

33 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Are they hunkered down with martinis in George Will's basement?

This actually sounds like a party I'd go to.

[Bonnot OG]

the media doesn’t check him on this either. They just let him spew. They’re just glorified fucking transcribers 

[Bonnot OG]

and some here over the past two years told me they were just a fringe element. There are literal neo nazi in the state department 

 

 

[DMC]

USA TODAY headquarters evacuated; police confirm report of man with a weapon

Quote

USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Va. was being evacuated Wednesday after police reported a man with a weapon at the suburban Washington building.

Alarms sounded at the building as police squad cars converged on the scene. Law enforcement officers with rifles and body armor were patrolling the area and a helicopter hovered overhead.