Trumplords celebrate the Donald’s big victory by yelling about “cucks” on Twitter

@varalys

UK person here. I’m faintly horrified by this, how likely is it that Trump will become POTUS? He’s a subject of much mockery over here, but I don’t know much about how US politics works so reassure me someone!

The easiest way to make sense of it is to look at demographics. The Republican Party base is what somebody once described as “angry white men and the women who tolerate them”. They have no obvious path to expand outside that base.

That was enough to win them landslide and near-landslide victories from 1968-1992. But their core demographic has been gradually shrinking. 1992-2008 was a transitional period; the Democrats won two Presidential elections with <50% of the vote (in contests with an unusually strong third party candidate), and then the Republicans won the next two elections by a razor-thin margin. By 2008, the demographics had shifted enough to give Democrats an advantage, and they've won the last two elections by comfortable margins.

Now, the one consistent advantage Republicans have is that they're really good at getting their base to vote, even in the boring off-year elections. (This is part of the reason that they control Congress.) But that means that there's nothing that Trump can do to bring out new voters. There will be very few people who vote for Trump in 2016 but didn't vote for Romney in 2012.

On the Democratic side – Clinton is less popular than Obama, so she's at risk of seeing lower turnout than he did, but even so, she'd still probably be favored to win. Running against Trump gives her an additional advantage, because he's going to be very good at motivating some key demographics to turn up and vote against him. In particular, Hispanic turnout has been relatively low in past elections, but it's expected to improve this year.

The bar chart in the middle of this page will give you a good picture of what's been going on.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/

The cuckoo is a rather horrible and creepy bird.
Comparing it with human relationship crap is a severe insult to one of nature’s horror movie monsters.

Let me get this straight. You feel she’s qualified, but because her husband already served as president you don’t think she should?

That, combined with the fact that he’s still alive, yes. I also thought it was an embarrassment to see George W. and Jeb Bush run for nominations, let alone one of them actually gaining access to the White House.

I realize FDR was the son of Franklin Roosevelt, but at least he didn’t pursue the office until after his father passed away.

@banned – And, in fairness, I know die-heard Republicans who said that they wouldn’t get behind Jeb because having “that many people from one family in the Presidency wouldn’t be right”.

@banned – Er, wasn’t Teddy like FDR’s 5th cousin or something?

And aside: Even moving past the Adams, a whole bunch of Presidents have been cousins a handful of times removed. That points less to a dynasty and more to the soft oligarchy that we’ve had for…well, the life of the nation*.

We tend to not to like things to be so blatant as father-son-brother or spouse-spouse, though :p

*Here’s moving ever forward towards a solid Plutocracy! /S

*cries*

@ mockingbird

It wasn’t so much that someone might be a single issue person. They could for instance believe that the most important things are economy, education, welfare, but have a range of policies that they’d be happy with. Whereas they’d have very clear positions on say defence, foreign policy and animal rights but wouldn’t be bothered if a party didn’t deal with them or had held diametrically different views.

So you could say something like ‘I’m very much in favour of grammar schools but it’s not a deal breaker”.

Ah well, it’s probably more a policy wonk thing to know the actual terms used; the concept is straight forward enough. It was just bugging me a bit that I couldn’t remember.

Thankyou for everyone for explaining things to me, I feel more confident now that Trump won’t win. I mean he’s a gift to our satirical quiz shows here, but I wouldn’t wish him on the US just for comedys sake.

@mockingbird
Some days I wonder why even bother to try, most of the blue collar work is going to be by robots soon. Bribery is not speech nor should it be encouraged to be normal or sustainable.
@Leftwingfox
Just remember, when Trump loses you can have the buggest shit eating grin.

@ mockingbird

As I’ll do so interspersed with the things I should actually be doing

Ha, know that one. In fact if a client ever challenges me about the amount of time I’ve spent on a matter I should just say “I was working on it for ages; just look at how many Mammoth posts I did!”

@Axecalibur – I’m not American (and I’d vote Hillary in a heartbeat over Trump), but … I’m not convinced she’d actually oppose the government corruption that article talks about. Citizens United came in under Bill Clinton, as did a whole lot of deregulation in the US. (I think? My brain is in a fog today for some reason)

You’re very right, though, in that you have to vote for the lesser evil if it means keeping out the greater one. That’s how ethics works.

(My feelings on Hillary are complicated, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m slagging her off – she carries an immense burden, and what might look like corruption on the outside may not be on the inside. Pragmatism and idealism are uneasy bedfellows.)

CN, sad story which contains suicide

This is mostly for Alan, some info about this picture:

http://media.lenearonsson.se/2015/02/tant-med-v%C3%A4ska.jpg

This photo was taken in April of 1985, in Växjö. It depicts a woman, identified as Danuta Danielsson, swinging her purse at a Nazi from the Nordic Reich Party during a protest. It was named “Photograph of the Year” in 1985, and later “Best Photograph of the 20th Century” at the Gothenburg Photography Exhibition.

The setting for the photo was a legal street protest by the Nazi group Nordic Reich Party, scheduled for noon on April 13. This party was formed in the 1950s by a well known Nazi man, and disbanded in 2009 after his death. They claimed to have thousands of members, but in reality it’s been estimated that the real membership figures were fewer than 100 individuals.

The idea that Nazis would march openly in a small town was almost unheard of at this time, and it became a big story in the news. The Left Party, at that time known as The Left Party-Communists, scheduled a counter-protest on the same day and at the same place, at 11am. It turned into a big event that drew several thousand counter-protestors, with the party leader coming down from Stockholm to speak, while the Nazi group consisted of 10 people according to my sources.

The protests resulted in some minor violence, including this woman swinging her purse at an unidentified Nazi. The picture was taken by photographer Hans Runesson from the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Initially, the editors hesitated to publish the photo since they suspected it to be a forgery (“too good to be true”), while also considering the potential legal consequences for the woman in the picture, who was easily identifiable. Despite this, it made the paper the next day.

The woman in the photograph was born in Poland as Danuta Sen, and had migrated to Sweden a few years before this incident to marry a Swedish man. Her mother was said to be a holocaust survivor, although this rumor has never been conclusively confirmed. According to her friends and surviving relatives, Danuta Danielsson struggled with mental illness as an adult, and had spent time in the psychiatric hospital on several occasions.

She reportedly hated the photograph for several reasons. For one, she did end up in legal trouble and was reported to the police but never convicted. She was also ashamed of her action and had expressed regret over the whole event, though she did have a firm anti-Nazi foundation. Thirdly, she found the picture not very flattering. She had been given the name “old lady with the purse” by the media, despite only being in her late 30s at the time. Three years after this incident, she committed suicide by jumping off the Växjö water tower.

The legend surround this photo has lived on, independent of the tragic story of Danuta Danielsson. The symbol of a lone woman fighting back against the Nazis was powerful enough to resonate with people regardless of the specific context of this event. Last year, it was suggested that the city of Växjö would erect a statue of Danuta swinging her purse, in the exact spot where the event took place. This was rejected by local politicians, who considered such an action to be showing support for violent protest. As a response, Twitter hashtags were started, and people started hanging purses on various statues as well as in the trees surrounding the intended spot for the statue.

In December of 2015, the statue had been moved to the city of Varberg, where it was finally uncovered.

http://gfx2.aftonbladet-cdn.se/image/21885324/485/normal/fd35f98e4dc69/tant.jpg

Just last week, however, Varberg politicians also rejected the statue which will now be taken down or moved again. To be continued, I suppose.

And history repeats itself, as Nazis once again marched in the city of Borlänge the other day, this time in greater numbers. A photograph of badass activist Tess Asplund has been published by several newspapers, and also received international attention as it was published by the Daily Mail, among others. J.K. Rowling even tweeted the picture and mentioned the activist by name, with a heart emoji attached.

http://images.mmcloud.se/api/v1/images/a5d89145-9d34-4b21-add7-083731f3d0d2/980.jpg

Our more or less openly racist political party is now the 2nd or 3rd largest party, and their voters are overwhelmingly men. Now, more than ever, can we say that women are literally and figuratively standing between the Nazis and their would-be victims. So, thank you, women voters and activists.

Edit button isn’t showing up. By not a law, I meant not a bill that was passed and signed into law.

(And it was the story about Tess Asplund that led me to the picture in the first place)

Yeah, I figured. I just saw that picture for the first time today.