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[Frumple]

I wonder what the politics are of Trump deciding to sink Obamacare himself vs. the GOP doing it. Less bad for Republicans, or more (and for who in particular?)

Depends on when the repercussions hit, basically. The short form is regardless of which does it, if something actually better doesn't get put in its place they're almost certainly fucked an election cycle or two out. Probably not 2018, in this case, but if it's not an end term implementation it'd just be 2020 instead.

Thing you have to remember is this embuggery screws a lot of people, and when people get screwed they blame the party of the current president like clockwork. If this stuff doesn't actually lead to equal or better access and lower premiums (and just in case, that sound you hear in the background when you read that is the CBO laughing until they cry and then sobbing for a while, far in the distance), the blame will splatter across both president and party like a cannon fired kitten into the windshield of someone going 80+.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Speaking of which, Trump's net approval rating with rural voters, originally +17%, is now 0%. It's technically been lower, but the overall trend looks a lot like the bottom falling out of Trump's voter base.

[RedKing]

Speaking of which, Trump's net approval rating with rural voters, originally +17%, is now 0%. It's technically been lower, but the overall trend looks a lot like the bottom falling out of Trump's voter base.

Worth noting it was actually negative back in the summer, during the ACA repeal fiasco (and largely because of that). He's dropped support across the board, but the biggest declines were over healthcare (-16), dealing with Congress (-16), and immigration (-17).

Response: "FAKE NEWS! People love me! #MakeMeGreatAgain"

[pikachu17]

So, uh, why did anyone vote for Trump in the first place? Seems like he has something to hate for everyone.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Because he bore the crimson R. Because losing another Supreme Court seat would make the court liberal. Because fuck the system. Because blaming illegal immigrants and leftists keeps you from blaming yourself.

There are probably other reasons for Trump's base, but those cover all the main reasons.

[Max™]

Also her emails?

[EnigmaticHat]

If we could visit parallel universes maybe we could see how much of a difference the Russian interference made.

[pikachu17]

Because he bore the crimson R. Because losing another Supreme Court seat would make the court liberal. Because fuck the system. Because blaming illegal immigrants and leftists keeps you from blaming yourself.

There are probably other reasons for Trump's base, but those cover all the main reasons.

But couldn't all of those reasons work for a republican candidate that isn't obviously crazy?

[wierd]

(gigglesnort)

You mean a RINO?

(trollface)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Because he bore the crimson R. Because losing another Supreme Court seat would make the court liberal. Because fuck the system. Because blaming illegal immigrants and leftists keeps you from blaming yourself.

There are probably other reasons for Trump's base, but those cover all the main reasons.

But couldn't all of those reasons work for a republican candidate that isn't obviously crazy?

Well, not all of them. Many if not most people vote based on party affiliation, and the Supreme Court thing was important. But Trump was definitely the fuck the system candidate, and nobody else took the anti-immigration screed to quite the level he did.

Ultimately, the other Republicans (mostly) and Hillary all violated Rule Zero: Don't be boring. Trump was a lot of things, but he wasn't boring. That's the power of interest and audacity. Do you think that Jeb! could have gotten away with Grab Her By The Pussy? No fucking way, man. Trump has been hyping his own persona his entire life, and he leveraged it in a way that most of the others failed to compete with, talking about their boring-ass "values" and "records".

Bernie would have won, as he was the only other person who even registered when it came to Rule Zero. Hill Dawg might have made it if she had an understanding of the play or was better at acting like she wasn't blatently pandering.

People thought Trump was fucking up because he violated their playbooks, but he stuck to his own almost without error. And so in complacency, they tripped all over themselves and left the path to victory open.

[Reelya]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/russia-attempted-to-use-pokemon-go-to-stoke-racial-tensions-in-the-us/news-story/cf0b508b52ff3557cf09d17a3ac6ba4e

While the tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google will be dragged before a Senate and House Intelligence Committee next month for their role in spreading the material, we’re still learning the extent of Russia’s subversive campaign.

A new report by CNN shows Russia even used the previously popular smartphone game Pokemon Go to carry out its insidious agenda.

One Russian-linked campaign posed as part of the Black Lives Matter movement and was titled “Don’t Shoot Us”.

The Don’t Shoot Us YouTube page, which is simply titled “Don’t Shoot,” contains more than 200 videos which all link back to a donotshoot.us website.

The investigation found the website was linked to a Tumblr account which promoted a contest encouraging readers to play Pokemon Go. It specifically encouraged them to play the game at sites where police shootings of black men and alleged incidents of police brutality had occurred.

Users were instructed to give their Pokemon names that corresponded with those of the victims, CNN reported.

Man, it makes you wonder how much other general shit-causing stuff could be linked back to the Russians.

[wierd]

Or to any organization/group with an axe to grind, and access to capital resources sufficient to motivate media puppets.

(Verizon, Google, Disney, et al, all could have pulled off similar stunts, using the same basic mechanisms--- research public behavioral trends, provide financial motivation to create circumstances to exploit those behavioral trends, then profit from said exploitation.)

Basically, any major corporation, and their marketing departments.


Just where do you draw the line between "harmless product promotion" and "Nefarious plot for sinister gains" though?

[smjjames]

Or to any organization/group with an axe to grind, and access to capital resources sufficient to motivate media puppets.

(Verizon, Google, Disney, et al, all could have pulled off similar stunts, using the same basic mechanisms--- research public behavioral trends, provide financial motivation to create circumstances to exploit those behavioral trends, then profit from said exploitation.)

Basically, any major corporation, and their marketing departments.


Just where do you draw the line between "harmless product promotion" and "Nefarious plot for sinister gains" though?

You mean like Pepsi taking advantage of BLM that one time? Fortunately, they tend to trip and fall on their faces while trying to do that, so, it's usually counterproductive. And of course, there's the movie industry and hype building.

Anyway, whole bunch of stuff going on in relation to Iran.

He's threatening to decertify the Iran deal if Congress doesn't act, and says he could at any time.

He accused the Iranian IRGC (the revolutionary guards) of promoting/supporting terrorism, but stopped short of outright declaring them a terrorist group, and an Iranian official/politician has said that doing that (or if he declares the IRGC a terrorist group) would effectively be an act of war. It was an unnamed official, not President Rouhani, so, it's just rhetoric from their politicians atm.

Other countries are protesting the US terminating the accord since it wasn't an unilateral deal (which Trump seems to think it is), it was a multilateral deal with many other countries.

Some further details and stuff in a Vox article.p/url]

[Starver]

Hill Dawg might have made it if she had an understanding of the play or was better at acting like she wasn't blatently pandering.

Trump blatently pandered (to the table-flipping mad people, mainly) at least as much as Hillary pandered (to various other groups, only some of whom were crazy, and only some of whom only wanted to smash a glass ceiling). The trouble was that Trump got enough strategicly positioned reserves of his pandered-to people to overcome her pandered-to ones. And enough people who really didn't want him might not have realised that by expressing their marginally lower reluctance for her by going 3rd-party or not voting. (I remember trying to tell people that 'protest' votes were not going to help, just because they didn't want to prop up the 'obvious' winner that would be Hillary. But even I didn't realuse how close to the wire it was getting, as predictions bounced around in various ways.)

Good old hindsight. The "deplorables" comment alone (spun into a rallying cry by the true Deplorables) could have been enough to have swung things from if its real meaning (that there were non-Deplorables, who could have been moved towards Clinton again, rather than annoyingly them into thinking they were also being tarred) had been better conveyed or just not so unwisely made. OTOH, if it hadn't been that, it would have likely been one of the other (possibly insignificant) little things.

Trump ultimately dished dirt better, mostly because he has more experience in a dirty environment, and knows how easily it might stick. And given Hillary's past experiences, that means a lot of dirt flew around Trump. He doesn't even have to duck some of it, just proclaims that it's his latest tan...

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hill Dawg might have made it if she had an understanding of the play or was better at acting like she wasn't blatently pandering.

Trump blatently pandered (to the table-flipping mad people, mainly) at least as much as Hillary pandered (to various other groups, only some of whom were crazy, and only some of whom only wanted to smash a glass ceiling). The trouble was that Trump got enough strategicly positioned reserves of his pandered-to people to overcome her pandered-to ones.

All politicians pander. The difference between good pandering and bad pandering is how you seem to others. Hill Dawg was never particularly skilled in that arena, she comes off as plastic and fake as far back as I've got video for.