Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mainiac]

Yeah well people spent the longest time describing perfectly normal mainstream candidates as just slightly less then the literal spawn of satan.  So now when you get a candidate who actually frankly discusses copying authoritarian governance, people are inoculated.  Oh, he wants to subvert the constitution?  You mean like people have been telling me that Obama and Clinton do?

You might consider finding a candidate more acceptable to the general public than Hillary then.

Yeah, how silly of democrats to think that a Secretary of State with a 20% net approval rating* would be acceptable in a general election.

Oh but there's everyone's canadian girlfriends, Bernie Sanders, if only he had won would have magically been immune to all controversy.  Elizabeth Warren, if only she had won would have been magically immune to all controversy.

*( i.e. the percent approving was 20% higher then the percent disapproving).

[NullForceOmega]

Then why isn't she completely destroying Trump in the polls?

Your plea falls upon deaf ears mainiac.  There is literally no force in the universe that will force me to vote for her.  She is repugnant to me.  So is Trump.

[mainiac]

Then why isn't she completely destroying Trump in the polls?

That's my fucking point.  They went with a broadly popular, middle of the party politician and people act like they picked Ted Bundy.

Like if you didn't want to vote for her because you dislike her stances or something I could respect that.  But to say that she is completely unacceptable?  This is the attitude that produces Trump.

[NullForceOmega]

I have clearly stated that I find her positions questionable and behavior unacceptable.  I find your defense of her every bit as laughable as you find my dislike of her.

If she is so amazing and excellent, and Trump is Satan, then why is her lead in question?  Answer: People don't like her, and don't want her to be president.

[birdy51]

The problem is that she seems to represent something more than her. That idea is stagnation. The common belief held is that she's been in the game too long to not be corrupt in some way shape or form. She symbolizes to many apathy and a lack of progress that has frustrated the nation for the last 16 years.

Even if it's not true, it rings true. And that is what makes an 'outsider' like Trump or Sanders so attractive. They seemingly represent political change and the idea of actually getting things done.

[Rolan7]

Then why isn't she completely destroying Trump in the polls?

My theory is because, while she's generally well-considered, a lot of people are desperate for extreme change.  Even sometimes change in the wrong direction, in bizarre hope that it'll scare the nation onto the right path.  Sanders isn't at all to blame for that, he just rode the wave and almost got the nomination.  I still really wish we got to see these two extremists duke it out, at least in a single debate.  Trump was right to renege on his promise, sucks though.

But yeah, instead we have a bumbling extremist versus a safe, experienced, moderate-liberal.  I don't think Trump has a chance, but I've been wrong about him before.  And I certainly don't get the vitriol against Hillary, except that people really wanted their idealistic agent of Elite Liberal change.

[NullForceOmega]

I don't even care about Bernie, I think he would have been a better choice than Hillary however.  I do want some meaningful change, I don't think the whole thing needs to burn down, but I do think that 'tried and true' Washington politicians are something that needs to go away permanently.

I'd kill for Ross Perot about now.

[Frumple]

Eh, if you're at least not voting for trump, go have fun. Clinton could sacrifice a few kids to Moloch on live TV and still be less likely to damage the country on basically every level.

Also a good chunk of the answer to the polling is "party-line". Buncha' people out there that would vote red even if trump was literally Zombie Hitler (same for blue, of course, but the dems hate themselves a lot less right now, comparatively). Rest of it is mostly that whole decades long smear campaign thing. The really telling thing is that trump's doing as poorly as he is despite basically being a non-entity until this cycle. She's beating him in most polls I've noticed despite the fact he's not been the focus of decades of variously effective character assassination. Trump had years of media humped handicap coming into this, and he's managed... what he's managed.

Relatively small margin isn't exactly unusual given folks' voting and polling habits, though. Also the standard reminders about the meaningfulness of polls this far ahead of the vote.

[Wolfhunter107]

Then why isn't she completely destroying Trump in the polls?

My theory is because, while she's generally well-considered, a lot of people are desperate for extreme change.  Even sometimes change in the wrong direction, in bizarre hope that it'll scare the nation onto the right path.  Sanders isn't at all to blame for that, he just rode the wave and almost got the nomination.  I still really wish we got to see these two extremists duke it out, at least in a single debate.  Trump was right to renege on his promise, sucks though.

But yeah, instead we have a bumbling extremist versus a safe, experienced, moderate-liberal.  I don't think Trump has a chance, but I've been wrong about him before.  And I certainly don't get the vitriol against Hillary, except that people really wanted their idealistic agent of Elite Liberal change.

The thing about Clinton is that she's been a major figure on the national stage for 25+years nkw, and has been a priority target for most of them . Hating her is basically an orthodoxy for them at this point, moreso than anything else, even traditional Republican platforms--more traditional conservatives and Trump's supporters will disagree on foreign policy and trade, but they all hate Hillary.

Fakeedit: There's also the old "we want of get rid of the corrupt politicians" line, too.

[NullForceOmega]

Eh, if you're at least not voting for trump, go have fun. Clinton could sacrifice a few kids to Moloch on live TV and still be less likely to damage the country on basically every level.

Also a good chunk of the answer to the polling is "party-line". Buncha' people out there that would vote red even if trump was literally Zombie Hitler (same for blue, of course, but the dems hate themselves a lot less right now, comparatively). Rest of it is mostly that whole decades long smear campaign thing. The really telling thing is that trump's doing as poorly as he is despite basically being a non-entity until this cycle. She's beating him in most polls I've noticed despite the fact he's not been the focus of decades of variously effective character assassination. Trump had years of media humped handicap coming into this, and he's managed... what he's managed.

Relatively small margin isn't exactly unusual given folks' voting and polling habits, though. Also the standard reminders about the meaningfulness of polls this far ahead of the vote.

You mean, of course, the part where, in spite of him pissing off most of the Republican party, to the point that there is an incredibly vocal block that flatly opposes him, he still manages to be equal to Hillary in the polls?  Because that seems like one hell of an accomplishment here.

[Orange Wizard]

I keep suggesting glorious worker's revolution, but that's never going to catch on when Sanders is considered an extremist.

Clinton is moderate liberal? Wut? She's more right-wing than NZ's right-wing prime minister.

...

You mean, of course, the part where, in spite of him pissing off most of the Republican party, to the point that there is an incredibly vocal block that flatly opposes him, he still manages to be equal to Hillary in the polls?  Because that seems like one hell of an accomplishment here.

Trump's got a cult of personality, all right. He matches the American pipe dream of hard work paying off, making it big in business, etc.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Trump succeeded because he went against the conventional wisdom in a way that resonated with what some people were deeply fed up with.

To take just one example, for years every Republican candidate trotted out the line of "Islam is not the enemy of the United States, but radicalism and terrorism is, and it can never be tolerated (even if we have to violate the rights of Muslims sometimes)", which people by and large could agree with but also looked at the continuing incidents of terrorism as smell as being bullshit.

Now Trump comes along with "Islam is a terrorist religion and I'll keep them all out of our country". It's a strong position to take, one that any conventional politician would take as inviting accusations of bigotry, but Trump doesn't care about being seen as a bigot. He'll keep harping on the security angle until he can just frame Muslims as not deserving of immigration or privacy rights because they breed terrorists.

It's not good logic, but it does have a certain appeal from the perspective of people who have listened to politicians trying to juggle the Terrorist Threat and Must Not Be Bigoted balls at the same time for the past 15 years. And he doesn't just do it with that, he does it with every issue he can. He eats Taco Bell on Cinco De Mayo and posts it on Twitter while calling illegal immigrants violent felons. This level of unflappable not giving a fuck and homing in on what parts of the typical message really are bullshit has a way to turn every accusation, both legitimate and illegitimate, against its source.

And now, if that wasn't bad enough, this guy is being pitted against Hilary "Rod Ham" Clinton, who is made entirely of bullshit and has no form but appeasement. She doesn't just play politics, anybody can listen to her for five minutes and know that she traded her flesh and blood for constituent polls and stump speeches years ago. She is literally everything Trump's supporters are raving about and her opponents hate in principle whether they support Trump as a result or not. Bill set up this era of party politics and she's its paragon, to the point that we have the DNC secretly calling the election for her on the day the primaries started and her only primary opponents being some dweeb and a guy who isn't a Democrat. And the dweeb was less popular than him by an order of magnitude!

This election isn't the showdown between liberals and conservatives, or between business as usual and revolutionary change. It's literally the showdown between the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell each other. Nobody is coming out of this election satisfied, and crazy though it may seem to say in the face of Trumpmania, I'm not convinced that 2020 won't be even worse unless Trump or Clinton somehow manage to give the country catharsis.

Fuck it, I'm voting for Johnson.

[Rolepgeek]

I don't even care about Bernie, I think he would have been a better choice than Hillary however.  I do want some meaningful change, I don't think the whole thing needs to burn down, but I do think that 'tried and true' Washington politicians are something that needs to go away permanently.

I'd kill for Ross Perot about now.

What else does one do to get experienced statesman who are capable of legislating?

American public clearly ain't up to the task as-is. Political class is vulnerable to corruption, but it's also a necessity with current economic/information systems.

[Orange Wizard]

You say that, but the American "political class" is basically just plebs with money.

[Rolepgeek]

Yeah. That's how political classes work. You have enough money that you can afford to sit around and talk politics all day long, discuss policy, broker deals, and appeal enough to people that the country doesn't break in the process.