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Looking at the Trump/Khan fight I have to think to myself that so far it's been amazingly effective. The DNC was last week and it's Monday. We're still talking about it. That's amazing for how the news is currently cycled. The cynic in me knows that the Khans are the perfect foil for Trump. Gold star parents, Muslim, parents of a fallen soldier. Trump doesn't respect Muslims or the military, the second of which should be easy for a republican candidate. Easy. In fact the best way to defuse the situation for Trump is to simply ignore it and gin up new controversy by saying something outlandish and stupid. American attention would shift away from the couple in a heartbeat. However Trump's ego and his inability to regulate himself means that he's going to tilt at this particular windmill over and over again. If the Khans want to step away from the controversy and he won't let them that's even worse. He'll just be seen punching down over and over again and made out to be a bully. I would say that this normally wouldn't have the power to undo Trump, but if he won't let it go and he makes a point of trying to win an unwinnable argument he's going to irreparably damage his reputation with republicans in a way that is obvious. The Khans never had the ability to take down Trump, but Trump's treatment of the Khans is doing serious damage to his image. If I were the democrats I'd be finding more people like this. Trump seems eager for the controversy and is easily baited. He'll take a poke at anything or anyone who offends him no matter how dumb it is. He'll charge stupidly at anything that gets his attention. The normal person in me is sad for the Khans that they're getting used like this. I hope they turn out okay.
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Aug 1, 2016 14:21
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I'm seriously wondering just how long Trump is going to spend responding to the Khans. Another day? Days? Weeks? Will he continue to die on this hill over and over until the end of the election? Beyond? I mean people are going to keep poking him with it until he gives up on his own. So when does he decide to give up on his own?
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Aug 2, 2016 09:42
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All right, I had a bet with a friend of mine Trump v. Clinton for a hundred bucks. This was months ago when I bet that Trump would blow up harder than the democrats could get in their own way. Normally we get along and it was his bet to put my money where my mouth was in regards to this election because I was telling him in no uncertain terms how bad of a train wreck would he would be. We talk politics constantly and while we disagree often about politics we're normally congenial which is weird in these days of echo chambers. Would offering him to buy me out for twenty bucks and a six pack that we can share condescending? I really don't want to be condescending, but at this point when Trump is making fun of dead veterans, attacking their families, dissing babies, not supporting Ryan or McCain and generally being a loving mess everywhere I can't see him spinning this back in his favor. I'm not sure if any amount, big or small, of the dems tripping over their own dicks can sink this election for them. Should I let it ride or have a hard talk about it?
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Aug 3, 2016 06:55
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Warcabbit posted:He could be committed. They could Eagleton him. I am not saying this is a good idea or likely idea, but it is one way I can think of that would have him be otherwise indisposed as per RNC rules, and not rely on his agreement. No matter how pants on head insane he is, if he's committed the election for the republicans goes down in loving flames. They can't blame the dems for committing him in a convincing way. They'll eat one another alive. It's as good as throwing away the senate and getting deep gouges torn out of the house.
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Aug 3, 2016 18:37
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kaleedity posted:If the RNC does get to the point where they drop Trump, the most important questions are who gets to tell him he's fired and will it be filmed live I didn't ask for this erection, but here it is.
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Aug 3, 2016 18:40
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Dexo posted:https://twitter.com/LadyBugAssassin/status/760893443887333377
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Aug 3, 2016 18:52
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Geostomp posted:Have we ever had a candidate have such a spectacular meltdown after the primaries before? We need to get Trump up there with Vermin Supreme.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:13
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Dick Trauma posted:Who is Prester Jane? Is it bad to ask? A poster on the forums who writes quite a bit about authoritarianism. She's been making amazingly farsighted and reasonably specific predictions for this election and quite a few of them have turned out to come true.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:26
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Yinlock posted:I'm not sure about this, actually, The media has officially turned on him and they can't really switch back into horse-race mode that easily. Trump has also been spending 2 weeks making GBS threads his pants non-stop live on stage. I'm honestly wondering what exactly they told him to make him cool it. Was it just a sanity check? Threats of some sort? Bribery? Some sort of realization of mutually assured destruction? Any speculation? I'm stumped.
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Aug 6, 2016 02:12
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Gyges posted:I wouldn't be surprised if the day or two of muzzled Trump comes from someone actually forcing him to get a full night's sleep via ambien or something. Then he goes back to barely any sleep for a while and gets crazier and crazier until Manafort once again manages to trick him into getting a full night's sleep. Honestly I think the sleep idea is probably the best. The campaign trail is grueling in a way that people his age rarely feel. If he's staying up all night checking twitter and social media for what people are saying about him and getting four or less hours of sleep a night one can go crazy over time as they slip. For him I assume it's crazier as he's not completely in touch with reality anyway. I think that this is a big part of having a successful and talented team that Trump is really lacking and it's showing. Hillary has attracted highly talented people. They take the burden off her because she listens to them and doesn't micromanage them. Trump can't attract any real talent, he doesn't listen to them and generally he runs a one man show. In fact his actual talent spends most of their time cleaning up after his messes. He's creating work for them to do by acting out instead of allowing them to help him. This is all speculation, but I think it fits. Hillary ran a campaign before and has been on the trail with her husband twice. She's experienced and probably knows her limits. He's not experienced in this, doesn't know his limits and doesn't trust anyone on his campaign enough for them to create less work for him. Everything gets micromanaged and that's exhausting in a time where he's already being exhausted. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 02:53
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Evil Fluffy posted:Then the Debates happen and there's no way Trump is going to rattle Hilary unless he says some truly horrific poo poo that leaves America speechless and if that happens then the race is over and the only question left will be how big of a gain the Dems make in Congress. I think Trump is going to skip the debates. Possibly all of them, but at least one. He's been telegraphing it for over a month now with the made up excuse of the letter from the NFL and complaining about vote rigging. Just like in the republican primaries it's most likely not going to go well for him.
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Aug 6, 2016 02:58
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Feinne posted:No he's going to announce he'll skip the debates then Clinton will make fun of him for it and he'll immediately backtrack. I think it depends on when he pulls out of them. If he does it a week or two beforehand he'll probably go into it because he was made fun of. If he does it a day or two beforehand he may follow through with it. He might do the Ross Perot thing and run a separate debate just for him and respond to her in a place where she can't easily respond back. quote:Trump's biggest problem is that the polling is showing him way, way down. Hillary up in Georgia is a big loving deal, and if this type of polling keeps up for much longer Trump is going to have the loser stink begin to stick to him. Then he's really hosed, because people don't want to put in any effort to vote for someone they know is going to lose big. I can't begin to imagine just how hated Trump will be by the republicans and republican party if he's the one that loses the previously solid South. Georgia becoming a swing state is the beginning of the end for the republicans current strategy. If he loses Texas too (unlikely but it could happen if he fucks up hard enough) it will shatter the party.
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Aug 6, 2016 03:09
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LeeMajors posted:I'm legitimately starting to think he's going out of his way to throw this election. No one could make this many gaffes in a row on purpose. He can lose in a landslide and say the election was 'rigged'. His base will eat it up, so he will save face there--and he will avoid his 'dog catches car' moment. Peter Principle. He's been promoted to the level of his incompetence. While he's not a particularly good businessman he's amazing at marketing. He mopped the floor with the republican candidates because the party was too weak and divided to call him out in an effective way. He dispensed with dog whistle racism and went with real racism which to a certain segment of the voting population must be absolutely refreshing even if it does drat your reputation. Primary Trump kicked a lot of rear end, but candidate Trump is going to get kicked about when he's in the same room with Hillary. I'm waiting for her to start an emperor has no clothes moment when she demonstrates just how incompetent he is.
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Aug 6, 2016 04:05
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BAWRLIN posted:I am in southern Missouri and have been goddamn buried in Jill Stein ads. Only one major party is running time for commercial ads so it stands to reason that the ads are cheaper than normal. The Clinton campaign can afford to run more of them and it means that the third parties can afford to buy ad space too.
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Aug 6, 2016 17:38
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UV_Catastrophe posted:Before Snowden, I thought that allegations of massive, secret government surveillance programs were the realm of tin foil hat wearers. It was there, but it was subtle. Imagine you have a puzzle but the picture on the box is missing. It's enormous and the pieces all fit together to make something you can recognize as you put it all together. However there are pieces that are missing. You can infer the shape and picture of those pieces from pieces around them. You may not know exactly how everything fits together. You may not know the exact picture. You can infer what it would look like and how it all fits together. Save for some people in the know who had proof of the depth and breadth of the spying everyone else who was alarmed was just guessing, but they were good guesses based on available data. You're not dumb.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:07
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iospace posted:This may be a make or break thing for people on the fence on abortion, at least down in Florida. Oh God, you're right. Maybe not make or break, but it'll definitely be a wedge issue about who is a to blame. Then it'll be a matter of who they can blame the Zika outbreak on. And with Trump spending nothing in targeted ads the dems will control the narrative.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:25
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DemeaninDemon posted:Yeah you can separate the two pretty easily. Even more so today since it has absolutely nothing to do with Hillary. I think what's one of the most awful and condescending things about the election is that Hillary is being hit with the cheating scandals of her husband as if she is some sort of extension of him even as a presidential hopeful. How dare she be cheated on?
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Aug 7, 2016 23:59
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DaveWoo posted:538.com just updated its Nowcast. It's encouraging me to vote. I never thought that there would even be a chance of SC going blue.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:24
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zoux posted:Before you get too hype, these are based solely on modelling, there hasn't been any polling done in SC this year. Doesn't matter. It's heartening. May as well do it. I've registered to vote several times (mostly for local initiatives) and have been denied each time as the state said I was not registered to vote. At least twice, maybe three times. Can't remember. I'll mail my vote in so I'm not standing in line all day. It'll be fun.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:30
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So I have a question. Trump seems to be funneling boatloads of money to himself and spending little if any of it on the actual campaign. What are the social, economic and legal repercussions for this?
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Aug 8, 2016 19:33
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I heard something bandied about recently and I got to thinking. If Donald Trump was purposefully trying to lose an election would he be doing anything differently? I just don't know at this point. I feel like the political race has turned into some sort of political fanfic, but then went best seller despite how poorly written and stupid it is. Reality is stranger than fiction. I just wonder how Trump is going to top himself after this. Perhaps some sort of mass disenfranchisement. Women aren't voting for me? They shouldn't be voting at all. Muslims? I'm not saying they're all terrorists, but maybe we need to be sure. Perhaps we should concentrate them in some sort of camp until we separate the good ones from the bad ones. Perhaps we should invade one of our allies to allow for extra living space. Mexico would be pretty great if not for all of the Mexicans. They don't have armies or nukes. Let's annex Mexico. It'll be great.
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Aug 10, 2016 07:13
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Mr Interweb posted:Holy shite...  Honestly I don't think it's going to happen. Conservatively I can be on board for Hillary winning the white house and senate flipping 50+ democrat, but winning the house would be too wild for me. I can't imagine Trump damaging the downticket races that badly in that many places. If it happens though the dems have two full years to unfuck six years of tea party blocking. Things can happen again. Government can finally work without constant obstruction. It's pretty wild to think about. No way am I that optimistic though. Hillary wins by at most seven points in the popular vote, creams the electoral college, picks up a few extra senate seats and makes inroads into the house, but not enough to truly matter.
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Aug 10, 2016 19:54
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So does anyone want to take a guess at what happens if someone makes an attempt on HRC's life? The implication can now be laid at Trump's feet well into the future now by the media. Does the republican party finally shatter or do they manage to hold on somehow?
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Aug 10, 2016 21:02
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speng31b posted:He has to show to debates. The idea that he's not is beyond the pale. This is Trump. Either he'll back out of the first and be bullied/laughed at until he shows up for the second, or show up for the first and then back out for the rest.
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Aug 11, 2016 00:30
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I feel like where before his stupid/insane comments were basically overlooked now the media has stopped the horse race narrative (for now) and is most likely waiting until the first debate to pivot to some sort of new narrative. In the meantime every stupid or insane thing seems to push his numbers even lower. Each statement makes the dems want to turn out more and republicans want to turn out less. At this point Trump going to a debate is a high risk maneuver, but it may be the only thing he can do to stop this hemorrhaging of republicans from his campaign. If he doesn't show up it'll be the republican debate all over again where he cedes the narrative to his opponents. If he does show up he may get a pass on air if he doesn't say anything too insane, but all the American people will be watching, not just his audience. Most people haven't listened to an entire speech from him yet. They've just gotten heavily curated sound bites. Maybe he can stun Hillary with a statement so stupid that she can't respond to it and appear as if he's scored some sort of point, idk. What infuriates me is this different standard both of them are held to. The bar can't go any lower for Trump. People will call it a victory if he doesn't poo poo on the floor and roll in it.
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Aug 12, 2016 16:20
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theflyingorc posted:That person literally wants fascism Yeah. Also I think it's lowering expectations. "Trump doesn't have to win. He's set the tone." I honestly think he's right in a way. Trump has injected a lot of crazy into politics and its going to take a while to wash it out. That's if people weren't also buying into the crazy and actively encouraging it. What bothers me about this election more than others is the amazing amount of low to no information voters who've washed into politics on a wave of populism. It happened on the left with Bernie's supporters and it's happening on the right with Donald's. They're people who don't understand the political process at all, are often learning (incorrectly) how politics works now by setting roots in ignorance that is going to last for a long time and as a result of their first exposure to politics being populism and a particularly crazy and stupid form of it are going to linger in the political substrate for years and years to come. Normally I know more than my fair share of people who are learning about politics for the first time in an election, but the number of them who don't understand how anything works while complaining about a broken system that they don't understand is staggering. People are having their first real exposure to politics this time around and its roots are set deeply in anger, cynicism, deception, fear and hatred. And we've got months to go. It's only going to get uglier and stupider.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:16
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theflyingorc posted:I'm not sure I agree with this - I think Trump turned over a rock that all these people had been hiding under, I don't think he's the source. He just made people willing to say loudly what they had been saying in hushed tones. I agree in part, but at the same time he's further radicalizing and normalizing this behavior in others. Populists don't create the wave. They ride it. However they can also guide it. Maybe people were talking about it in hushed tones, but "They're going to steal the election" wasn't something that the far right was taking seriously until he started talking about it for example.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:22
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zoux posted:No, I mean that the RNC efforts to freeze out non-traditional candidates in 2016 actually led to Trump winning. Like, it wasn't that it didn't work well, it literally handed the primary to Trump. I think the problem with that is that it's at best a temporary fix. The electorate likes looking for political outsiders and if you shut them out you end up with people who are professional but the dems can run someone with more of that outsider feel and snatch up voters that are disgusted with normal politicians. Further, the forces that chose Trump don't disappear. They're often retiring and dying, but slowly. Republicans really didn't need to learn a lot after 2008. The demographics were aging but still there. In 2012 they came to the conclusion that there needed to be changes. My guess is that some people tried, but any chance at reform got RINO'd out by reactionary teapartiers. So here we are in 2016. My guess is that there will be serious attempts at trying to get the party to reform, but the republican electorate won't have it. It's too brittle. It will break before it will bend.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There is no "they" left to coordinate attempts at reform. The party structure has too little remaining control over candidates and primaries. I always had a sense of this but I've never known just how extensive it was. Can you elaborate on this and/or do you have any links? Geostomp posted:That's what worries me about Trump. He himself is mercifully being rejected by sane people, but he has already done damage to the country just by indulging the worst of it for support. Giving validation to naked bullying, bigotry, and ignorance solely by rising so high. When he fails, still take decades to remove his stench. I think it's not exactly Trump that it's emanating from. He's both a cause and a symptom, but mostly I think he falls into the symptom category beyond pushing the whole birthing thing for most of a decade. I feel like the real problem is coming from a number of ultra-right and alt-right echo chambers where they only talk to themselves. On the shallow end you have places like Fox which honestly aren't as bad anymore, not because they've changed their format, but because the media has gotten worse. You also have churches which are encouraging strands of political thought which smash directly into pluralism and egalitarianism. I think the biggest dissemination though are right wing internet sites and right wing radio. Places where the last of the ad funding, which is now one of the last moderating factors (corporations), either doesn't exist or doesn't care if you say something racist or crazy because they're catering to a niche market.
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Aug 12, 2016 20:22
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DemeaninDemon posted:You just lost a debate! To a GIRL! Lost a debate by being too scared to show up! SAD!
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Aug 14, 2016 09:03
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Air is lava! posted:Okay. Honest question here. Has Trump made one good decision during the general election? As far as I see it, the "moderate" tones Manaford fed him were the only thing keeping him alive. The only way to run a worse campaign would be to formally endorse Hillary. And even then 35% would vote for him. Being anti-free trade/globalism would work wonders for him in rust belt swing states if he was a competent candidate and would make Hillary either hustle hard to keep them or lose. There are a lot of right leaning democrats that live in those states and seeing someone who is paying active attention to them is refreshing instead of two candidates flooding their states with ads instead of jobs. He's a celebrity. Granted he's a C or D list celebrity, but he has name recognition and he's been building an imagine of himself as a thoughtful, intelligent and successful businessman. He's not, but he crafted that image and it stuck. Also as a sort of outrageous reality TV star he'd primed people to accept stupid, crazy and racist stuff. The media early on did try to call him on what he said, but the problem is that voters didn't give a drat or at least republican voters didn't in enough numbers to eliminate him. Over and over pundits predicted his downfall and over and over they were wrong. It hurt the media's credibility by being so hilariously wrong so often. Then there was a sort of feeling that he could get away with stuff and the media let him because they couldn't call him on it without looking like idiots. If he were a more competent candidate outreach to black people wouldn't exactly have brought in a majority of their votes, but it would have depressed them for the dems and maybe snagged a few for the republicans. Back above the normal 10%. Talking about infrastructure spending is a big deal because it'll put people back to work and fix what is essentially in desperate need of repair. Both candidates are talking about it. Honestly though I only see Trump getting it through unless congress somehow flips democrat which unless something unforeseen and drastic happens it isn't going to happen. The only thing Hillary is really going to be able to accomplish with a hostile house is to get judges through and that's if she even gets that. It'll be 2010-2016 all over again. Working the media early on. Trump would do call ins while they talked about him and the media would eat it up even though journalists hate doing call-ins. It's harder to interrupt people, challenge them or clarify points as a journalist without coming off like a jerk. Plus he gains access to hundreds of thousands of people on a whim and he could just be watching the TV in his bunny slippers. It was free attention when the media liked doing it more. Now though they've turned against him and he has a much harder time doing this. Also just in general he's fairly media savvy. He knows how to build a brand. The only problem is that his message sucks. Trump would've had a serious shot if he were Christian, embraced border control and a sort of compassionate conservatism while railing against elites who have been dithering not only on the left but on the right. You can talk about border control without sounding like a pants on head crazy racist. And finally, only until recently had his lack of money raised was a serious problem for him because of the above point. It was often a problem, but if he spent more time campaigning in swing states instead of loving Maine and Connecticut he might have been able to make up for it in part. He's run the campaign on a shoestring budget and as long as the media bowed to him he was going to be able to compensate in part for a total lack of ground game. Also there wasn't a huge point in trying to run a ground game because no competent republican operative has really backed him. He'd have to spend a lot more money with D and F list talent in order to effectively target voters. I could go on for a bit if I thought about it more but it's late. He actually has stuff going for him, but his problem is that he's a raging, racist narcissist and totally unteachable. He doesn't learn from mistakes and doesn't seem to even attempt to learn from them. If I was back in my old political science classes and I asked freshman how you'd lose an election being openly racist, making fun of the military and kicking babies out of your rallies would be near the top of the list. What scares me is that a charismatic and likable populist could have destroyed Hillary. Just no holds barred absolutely wrecked her because trust in Hillary and her favorability in general are low. She's the weakest candidate that the dems have fielded in a long time. Strong ground game, a consummate politician, an effective administrator and has a love for details and policy, but holy poo poo is she just despised on a personal level. Both parties are amazingly weak to populism right now. People are angry and I think the only thing that will keep those populists out of the 2020 election will be changing the rules to exclude more outsider candidates from the party so you can't have people like Trump or Bernie usurp the presidency from the parties having registered with them that year. There's been a real thirst for populism since a bit before the 2008 election. Then it was happy. Now it's soured. Give a few years of nothing to quell those hurt feelings and you'll see it go beyond sour to nasty or even violent if it doesn't go that way in just the next few months. Epic High Five posted:2008 Yeah. 2008 perhaps wasn't a totally obvious wake-up call, but I read the 2012 autopsy. There were a lot of good ideas in there for strengthening the party. Actively recruit minorities (especially Hispanics), pass immigration reform, stop bashing gay people, get republicans to start talking to people they don't agree with instead of talking only to themselves and stop being the rich guys party. The problem is that anyone who wanted to take a new direction got RINO'd right the gently caress out of the party. The demographics are shrinking and the republicans are going to get to a point where they won't be able to win the presidency anymore. 2020 is coming up and if the dems can pass reforms on gerrymandering and voter suppression laws the republicans could lose the house as well. I've been reading quite a few republican scholars recently. Among a few that I've read is that the party just can't change. It's white and old and old people don't change. It'll shatter before it'll change. Only when it really shatters will there be a realignment on the right. Until it shatters reformers will get RINO'd. Also the lady that wrote the autopsy left the republican party. It's a sign of how bad its gotten. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/6-big-takeaways-from-the-rnc-s-incredible-2012-autopsy Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 10:29
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Epic High Five posted:Is it possible to be a charismatic and likeable populist in a diverse nation? Populism isn't a philosophy that fools anybody but conservative whites, this election is doing a lot to prove that. There's no populism without massively increasing the power of the police and eliminating oversight, and right there you've lost non-whites 2008 was Obama riding a wave of populism. Quite a few of those voters weren't white. Granted he wasn't a populist, but that didn't really matter much because people wanted him to be. "At its root, populism is a belief in the power of regular people, and in their right to have control over their government rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite. The word populism comes from the Latin word for "people," populus. Definitions of populism." You may be thinking of authoritarianism. Populism can be adopted by any race, creed or color. It's not limited to the left or right, this race or that one. Anyway you can be a likable and charismatic populist in a diverse nation. You don't have to win everyone over. You just need to win enough people over to win the election.
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Aug 17, 2016 10:47
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QuoProQuid posted:Given that Ivanka, by all accounts, was Trump's last restraint, I will be interested in seeing how the campaign goes from here. It's hard to imagine Trump being any less unfiltered. Originally Trump had these sort of reality TV show yes men courtiers and they were displaced by people who were more professional. Not all of them, but enough to matter if he wanted to run a professional campaign. Now I think he's returned to it. He wants to run a campaign that makes him feel good, but not one that'll enable a win. Maybe he wanted to win before, but he can't unfuck the situation. He can't pivot in any meaningful direction anymore. That ship sailed. All he can do is depress Hillary's numbers. If Trump's rhetoric is truly off the leash it's going to go terribly for the republican party. He'll ruin downticket elections and has two and a half months to do it. Possibly terrible for everyone depending on how much he gins up his followers. Honestly at this point I'm waiting on Prester Jane to end her cross country move, plop down in front of a computer and tell me where the narcissism leads from here. While she isn't always correct, she seems to be more correct than most professional pundits because I have legit stopped trying to predict this loving election.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:44
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:As far as the 2012 campaign RNC post-mortem, we all laugh at how hard the GOP is not doing that stuff, but it's as if it were written in an isolated robot testing facility and not the real political environment. "Beep-boop, just become a Blue Dog Democrat but also never talk about social conservatism" is not really what many actual voters are looking for these days. Just ask Democrats. As discovered, there's no will in the GOP to do anything non-insane on immigration. That's the thing though. These aren't problems that'll get them in the long term. It's coming down the pipe as soon as the baby boomers start dying off in larger numbers which is happening now. I feel like the only way forward for the republicans is to cut bait with white supremacy and try to cobble together a multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalition while pivoting towards staying right on economics but turning left on social policies or perhaps vice versa depending on what voters want. The longer they stall the worse it's going to be as white supremacy continues to further poison the well with minorities with conservatism and the worse it's going to be when the party finally admits it doesn't have the votes to win anymore and a large number of people are simply no longer represented because they're too toxic. While they won't have the votes to win, they definitely will have enough to gently caress over the party that eventually has to spurn them or become completely irrelevant. The political reality is that they're pretty hosed. They need to transition and form entirely new coalitions with new voters who they've actively been loving over for years. It's not impossible, but every election that they fail to do it makes it that harder to eventually pivot when things finally fall apart. The bridge that needs to be built is too far and getting farther every day.
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Aug 17, 2016 12:04
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I think it would be amusing if in a fit of whimsy Trump decides to 180 on the Russians and trash talk Putin now that Manafort is no longer whispering in his ear.
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Aug 17, 2016 12:54
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FuzzySlippers posted:That would be a normal trump move. He'd then say he had never praised Putin or suggested we abandon NATO. That crooked media quoted me in too much context! Him praising the Russians for months was sarcasm. Don't you idiots understand sarcasm?
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Aug 17, 2016 13:02
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More sarcasm than a thirteen year old who discovered it for the first time.
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Aug 17, 2016 13:06
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Serrath posted:Can someone explain what a Goyler is, to the uninitiated? Google is of little help I think that he me listen to them because they're not political people, they're media people. He may not listen to them long term, but he may learn a thing or two as they're going to confirm his biases. "What you're saying isn't bad, it's how you're saying it" sort of thing. Plus him being more disciplined even if his message is trash is going to make the debates more difficult. He may be prepping for debates. I'm wondering how long the media is going to suffer him throwing hate at them though. This isn't just people blaming the "liberal media" for all of their woes, but suggesting reprisals and violence towards them. But yeah, at this point I don't think Trump can win. What bothers me is that he's stirring up hatred for people he doesn't like and at this rate it's going to spark violence. If we're unlucky it'll spark a lot of it too. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 05:02
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Moatman posted:I'd assume it's about that photo of a guy in front of a burning car "from milwaukee" that was actually from after some sports event. So, shockingly, racist. I don't really think that any of us are shocked by how racist the Trump campaign is anymore.
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Aug 20, 2016 04:28
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Kilroy posted:right around the time USPOL starts talking about various lovely polls is when I start to get my I think it's that he hasn't had some sort of gaffe in the last week or so. Not a bad one at any rate. Sure people under him are rolling in their own poo poo but he's been conspicuously quiet on the national stage and has instead been doing rallies. Also keep in mind that August is normally fairly quiet at this time of the month. We're far past the DNC/RNC. Normally the debates would be the next thing to look forward to but I think Trump is looking for any reason to back out of them without further tanking his own numbers. As someone from the thread mentioned he may try to get Johnson/Stein in a four way debate in order to give himself cover while they attack her. He can speak less and criticize more. He can then criticize Hillary for not wanting free and open debates with two candidates that together barely break 10% of the electorate in a first past the poll system. Hillary refuses and then Trump can declare that "look, politics is rigged" and just not show up for any debates. They both look bad, but Trump doesn't display that he doesn't understand how politics work on stage. He loses, but he loses less than if he was called on the fact that he knows nothing.
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Aug 21, 2016 00:55
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on again