Today’s another big political day here in the US — lots of primaries, including some that look like they’ll be pretty close. So have a thread to talk politics. Feel free to keep discussing Der Trump in the Trump threads, or here, it’s all good. And feel free to discuss non-US politics here as well. But please, no one use the phrase “Feel the Bern.”
My parents are expressing the conspiracy theory that Trump is running specifically to give Hillary Clinton the White House. I have no idea where they are getting this – my parents do not come up with this kind of thing on their own. They point to stuff like Trump giving money to Clinton’s last campaign, and going golfing with Bill, etc. The idea is that Bill Clinton talked him into a run during a golf game in order to put the election in the can for Hillary Clinton.
I admit that it’s an entertaining theory. It’s even more entertaining that they seem to waffle between believing this, and actually supporting Trump.
Back to real talk: the fact that Trump is a joke candidate has worked in his favor since the beginning. Media organizations don’t want to entertain him seriously, and they didn’t for the entire summer. That meant Trump got away with basically no coverage that he didn’t make for himself. Trump has many flaws, but an inability to stay in the news on his own terms is not one of them; no primetime news show took a deep and serious look at him and his shockingly thin policy positions until the primaries started, and up until that point he got exactly the coverage he wanted.
Now it’s too late: he already has a coalition amongst disaffected white working-class Republicans who are now impervious to any factual reporting about his ideas. The window for influencing their opinions has closed. He milked his joke status for all it was worth, and this is where it got him.
@Skiriki – Beautiful kitties! Are they Bengals? Better be careful, if so. I hear they’re smart enough to steal your credit card and order delivery sushi while you’re at work.
re: politics.
I’m an English expat in the USA and my husband and I are agreed up on the idea that if we end up with a Republican president AND the GOP controlling the legislature, we’re moving to the UK.
Yeah, things are hardly better there – and an international move is neither easy nor cheap – but we can’t bear the idea of our tax dollars supporting the implosion of the USA.
What if there’s a Republican prez and Democrat-controlled Congress? Magic 8 Ball says “Future uncertain, ask again later.”
There’s also the fact that Husband believes there to be more work to be had (in his field) over in Blighty and it takes a “push” AND a “pull” to make a successful migration (especially when you need a visa sponsor). He’s starting the job hunt in three months – just in case…
@Maghavan, I don’t think he was dogwhistling. A number of the protesters brought Bernie signs and lots of Bernie supporters tweeted/posted triumphantly how shutting down the event had been a victory by their movement. There’s no evidence it was coordinated by Sanders, and no official support, and I think it had a lot more to do with grassroots protests drawing on the many protests Chicago has been going through.
But it was the Sanders supporters who identified with it and celebrated it the most, so Trump retaliated there. I don’t think there is deeper meaning.
For people who think Sanders supporters would stay home, I think I saw a recent Guardian poll that had something like 12% of Sanders supporters saying they would stay home if Clinton was the nominee and 8% saying they would vote for Trump if it ended up Clinton Trump. I think the numbers overlap some because I don’t think the stay home question was specifically if it ended up Trump/Clinton, just if it wasn’t Sanders.
@Maghavan, I don’t think he was dogwhistling. A number of the protesters brought Bernie signs and lots of Bernie supporters tweeted/posted triumphantly how shutting down the event had been a victory by their movement. There’s no evidence it was coordinated by Sanders, and no official support, and I think it had a lot more to do with grassroots protests drawing on the many protests Chicago has been going through.
But it was the Sanders supporters who identified with it and celebrated it the most, so Trump retaliated there. I don’t think there is deeper meaning.
For people who think Sanders supporters would stay home, I think I saw a recent Guardian poll that had something like 12% of Sanders supporters saying they would stay home if Clinton was the nominee and 8% saying they would vote for Trump if it ended up Clinton Trump. I think the numbers overlap some because I don’t think the stay home question was specifically if it ended up Trump/Clinton, just if it wasn’t Sanders.
Republican candidates who talk trash about social security benefits just don’t seem to get they are sabotaging themselves by alienating part of their constituency, seniors.
The parties seem to think the American public is supposed to align with their party platforms, when in many cases they align poorly. Here in Michigan there are plenty of union workers who are conservative, and plenty of business leaders who know shutting down the government is “not doing your job”, not some kind of principled stance.
The best leaders know how to make different groups work together, so by that metric I think Clinton would be the best president. Just really wish she wasn’t so ready to thump on the drums of war.
It really upsets me that in my state (Indiana) we don’t get to vote in the primary until May 3. By then, it’s basically decided who will be the candidates. It makes me sick that Trump (Drumpf?) has had such a strong showing, and it saddens me that someone as “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” as Mrs. Clinton is edging out Sanders.
About the Conservative Clinton thing: it’s because Conservative doesn’t have to equal regressive, or blindly ideological conservative.
Though I think what us pinko canucks call conservative is better known as “moderate” in the US.
I can see upsets as being a thing, 538 polls in Michigan didn’t really earn me that much trust. Now with Trump I’m more worried about the fact that his opponents at this point are pretty much anchors to keep him from being nominee. Cruz is the candidate simply for being second banana and has the backing of GOP funders. Cruz is running out of evengelical states but has the religious right vote locked down somewhat. Rubio and Kasich are so far behind I don’t see either of them being anything other than delegate vacuums meant to keep the remaining delegates away from Trump.
Now it’s entirely possible that the US sees that violent rhetoric and open carry firearms in a public setting is a bad thing, but I fear it’ll take a massacre or two to make them realize that.
@ooglyboggles
There were more mass shootings here in the US last year, than there were days in the year.
Sandy Hook was over three years ago. Twenty dead first-graders didn’t even make a dent.
Ideologically, Hillary Clinton is no different than the other Democratic nominees we’ve had since I hit voting age. That would be Obama, Kerry, and Gore. But I have heard a lot more of the Hillary is evil/right wing/unlikable etc stuff about her than I’ve heard about those other candidates. I can’t help but think misogyny plays a big part in that. Even if it’s mostly subconscious.
I say that as more of a Sanders supporter, BTW. But my state had its caucus already so it’s out of my hands. I’ve switched to thinking in terms of the generals more.
I just have to say, a lot of people stayed home during the 2000 election and look at what happened. And the GOP has gotten so much more extreme that Dubya doesn’t seem anywhere near as terrible as I perceived him to be when he was in office.
That’s scary as shit. I will lose some much respect for any left leaning person who doesn’t turn out to the polls and will consider it an almost unforgivable offense if we wind up with a president Trump or Cruz because of it.
I’m not exaggerating at all.
This. This. A thousand times this.
@Falconer
Yeah that’s why I said unlikely.
The animals are in comtrol of the zoo that was the GOP propoganda machine, slowly realizing that the party is not cashing the checks it has been writing out.
@WWTH
I’ll my part to vote. If it’s any consolation no matter which dem candidate wins nominee, they will still win by a far margin, according to the latest polls that give both candidates around +10 vs Trump.
Here in Ottawa, the snow’s finally melting away, revealing the snow-preserved grass beside the streets. It seems like so long since there’s been any shade of green that I can’t help but reach out and feel the berm.
That’s what I keep thinking about the “What if someone gets killed at a Trump rally?” question. He’ll insist that he had nothing to do with it but also the victim totally deserved it, and also it’s a false flag operation to take away our guns so we need to bring more guns to rallies in order to defend our rights to bring guns to rallies no matter how many people die.
I mean, that’s not even a guess. It’s pretty much a surety.
Calling Clinton a conservative in the US context stretches words past their breaking point. I could see from a foreign perspective, but that same perspective would push Sanders into the same column.
I prefer Clinton because she is working to build a Congress that might write laws she will want to sign. I love Sander’s goals but I don’t see him actually building the coalition he needs. His stances are pure as the driven snow, but have about the same chance in hell if Congress isn’t changed.
I feel like Sanders does his best work in Congress pushing the agenda in a better direction while Hillary would work best as President.
It’s been raining for 300 consecutive days here in Seattle.
#FeelTheBerm
That being said, I have seen two generations vote against their own interests. I expect America will never listen to its better angels.
Even from a European perspective (using “foreign perspective” to mean European socialism is…fraught; not trying to pick on you in particular, since lots of people have been doing that), surely the most logical way to evaluate American politics is whether they’re trying to move towards a European-style socialist model (liberal) or away from it (conservative).
In general, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are only useful if you use them to mean “advocating social progress as compared to the baseline of this society” or “rolling back social progress as compared to the baseline of this society.” Direction and relative position are meaningful; “objective” position not keyed to the actual political climate is ultimately meaningless.
Come to think of it, Sanders would be a great VP because one of the key things a VP can do is allow the administration to gradually take stronger positions by espousing positions that the president may not be able to safely take yet (eg, Biden and gay marriage).
I’m watching all of this from a european (french, to be more precise) point of view, and let me just say… We on this here old continent are freaking scared of a President Trump. We used to joke around about America being even further to the right than our own wildest assholes (nevermind that we had Hitler, Franco and Mussolini), but then it stopped being funny when that haircut started showing around at the top of every damn poll.
Then again I may just be a misandrist beta male far-leftist polyamorous person (or basically just French, heh).
Sanders can win Illinois, Ohio and Missouri, they’re open primaries in states somewhat similar to Michigan.
In Ohio, Sanders aided by the fact that moderate Democrats may cross over and vote for Kasich. Unlike Rubio, he’s quite popular in his home state and it’s an uniquely supercharged anti-Trump vote. In Illinois, the Sanders campaign has chained Clinton to the unpopular Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. I think Sanders wins both.
I’m guessing Clinton will win North Carolina and pull out a close victory in Missouri.
I’m very confident Clinton will win Florida by a landslide, it’s a closed primary in a state tailor-made for her. Florida could really bury Sanders, the margin of victory in Florida is the key result of the day.
Johanna:
Yep! They are Bengals, a pair of cousins; I approached the breeder and asked if he had plans for kittens this year, but an adult cat is also OK and he said he has one… but she has also bonded with an another cat, would I take two?
When it comes to smartness, I am not so sure about that. I mean, about my cats being that smart. Carisma picked an empty trashcan (with a swivel lid) as her launching pad, and fell into it as soon as she initiated the jump and looked embarrassed. Didi has problems finding her way around in a three-room apartment, in a sort of absent-minded fashion, “Iiiiiiit is here… somewhere… hold on, why did I want to be here anyway?”
Then again, I am also sure that they are hiding some cunning plans, because they communicate. I swear to Ceiling Cat, they communicate like humans. They chirp, trill, cluck, croak, mewl, screech, groan, cough, creak, mew to each other, using sounds I’ve never heard a normal moggy or Bengal cat make, not even in YT vids. Or in these amounts — or in situations where they do it, like they’re plotting stuff; they have been setting up some sort of living room guerilla guard perimeter, and now prefer to sleep here at night, hidden, as if waiting for something to happen. o_O
Seriously, did I get some alien creatures? Female cat Ghostbusters? Femme Feline Predators? They already have unique sounds they use only when they want to get the attention of a specific human. Significant Otter gets extremely shrill and short mew, twice — !mew!mew! — and I get clusters of three “MEoWm! MEoWm! MEoWm!” which sounds freakishly like “Mom! Mom! Mom!”.
This is terrifyingly awesome, and definitely gives me weird inspirations.
I honestly don’t care whether Trump is, in his heart of hearts, as racist as the Klan members supporting him.
All that really matters is that he’s proven that he will drive that bandwagon over anyone and everyone who dares to challenge him.
It was the same with Ann Coulter: whether she was a con woman or a true believer was irrelevant once it became obvious that she wasn’t willing to apply the brakes when things started to get out of hand.
…and Didi just appeared out of nowhere next to me by the desk, gave a reassuring trill and headbutt, accepted couple of scritchies, stealthed off, vanished who knows where, and then re-emerged from her hiding place under the gaming table and between the chair, trilled again in a different tone and settled down to watch my back.
I, uh, don’t know what to think of this. At 10:50 pm, one’s imagination easily gets airborne, after all.
In no particular order:
-Bernard Sanders is not a socialist. The term does not exist seriously in the US, except as a bogeyman of the right. Sanders is at the most on the fringe of the liberal left, and the most accurate thing we could call him is an atavistic New Dealer. Ironically, this makes him more of a traditionalist than what passes for standard GOP thought. If there is any justice in this world (and there isn’t), he should get the Democratic nomination.
-Ms. Clinton is a woman. We know. A qualified woman. We know. But if you want to make the case that there must absolutely be a woman in the presidency because of The Right Side of History (TM), I’ll make you the same argument for one Marine Le Pen in the French elections scheduled to happen next year. What? That’s fine for Clinton but unacceptable for Marine Le Pen? Because of her politics? If that’s because of that, let’s discuss Ms. Clinton’s politics, which is more of the same establishmentarian neoliberal nonsense that the voters are tired of. A woman who rose to political prominence primarily by being married to a politician. A woman whose upper-class feminism has nothing to do with any sort of decent description of the term. She might know where the party’s bodies are buried, which might be why the establishment is reluctant to get in her way; but if the Democrats were to choose her, they would be making a major tactical mistake.
-Donald Trump will get the nomination, then will likely be president. Not because he makes convincing argument for himself, but because his opponents all make all his arguments for him, Left and Right. Like Salon resorting to name-calling instead of trying to dissuade Trump’s voters for one. Like the National Review saying the white working class might as well go die in a gutter, then wondering why they won’t vote for Ted Cruz as they were told to do. Sanders has a much better chance against Trump because 1) he, unlike Hillary Clinton, isn’t plutonium to anyone who doesn’t already support him; 2) Trump can make several claims about Clinton that — while they would make him a hypocrite most of the time for chastising her for things he is and does — also happen to be plausible, even true, while he does not have the same leverage over Sanders. To wit, Trump started targeting Sanders and not Clinton: he knows who is more dangerous to him.
Hear, hear.
My GF is hoping that whichever one wins the primary takes the other as their running mate. I don’t think Clinton would be willing to do that – I don’t think she’ll put up with this crap anymore if she’s not going for the Grand Prize – but with any luck, Bernie will.
@Skiriki
She’s just waiting to see where you leave your wallet. For the sushi.