The presidency is not the blowout that I was confident we'd have.
If I had to bet, I'd still guess that the first debate will be a game-changer in Clinton's favor, but I really really wish it were a blowout at every moment. Like I said Friday, I am super upset by how many people are entertaining the idea of killing and eating you for dinner.
But Clinton started birtherism, which is bad, because Clinton started it, but not because birtherism is bad, because Trump just wanted to know, like, where is Obama really from, but now Trump never wanted to know that because he always thought Obama was born in the US, unlike Clinton, who started birtherism, and anyway, what happened to my pension? I'm voting Trump to get it back.
My current worry is that Trump will be just coherent enough to get away with a 90% alpha-male posturing performance at the debates.
Where's Megan? I need her to tell me everything will be all right.
Probably going to Reno this weekend. The campaign appears to be sending buses from multiple stops in the Bay pretty much every weekend, with the option of making it a day trip (6am to midnight) or staying overnight.
Trump is a goddamn pussy when in front of a hostile audience. Watch the video of him at the church where the pastor shut him up, he's simpering even before she interrupts him, and when she does he's like a puppy who was scolded. Of course, he talked tough afterward.
Actually, maybe it's not that it was a hostile audience, maybe it's that he truly believed a room full of black people would attack him because they're obviously all criminals, AMIRITE?
Do the debates actually matter at all? Do they actually change anyone's minds?
Who the fuck knows? It seems like with the most ludicrous clown available, it still comes down to Generic D vs. Generic R.
6: The "it's always projection" articles actually helped me with divination of his mental state, since he said she acted nervous / neurotic. He was totally quaking in his boots standing up there.
Who the fuck knows? It seems like with the most ludicrous clown available, it still comes down to Generic D vs. Generic R.
Not exactly. There is more of a gender gap this year than... ever before? There is more of an age gap this year than... ever before? Also Hillary is a lot less popular than Obama, so you have a lot of people claiming they will vote for "random person who I don't already detest", which unfortunately happens to be a Republican libertarian.
The campaign seems to be stymied now by the realization that there may be people who voted for Obama and will now vote for Trump. Does this mean not all Trump voters are white supremacists? Cognitive dissonance.
Do the debates actually matter at all? Do they actually change anyone's minds?
I wouldn't have thought so, but remember that stupid month in 2012 when Obama was "unprepared" and "terrible" in the first debate and his polling seemed to stumble until he got it back after the 2nd debate? If the media wants a narrative that it hurts Clinton, it will hurt Clinton.
11 last: do the media actually matter? If the key is mobilizing low-information voters (which it seems everyone thinks it is) then those people aren't paying attention anyway, and the people who are are already committed.
They matter in that they're normalizing a total freakshow outlier so that the election can play out as Generic D vs. Generic R. Oh, you want to censor my show if I say something rude about you, but let me pet your hair because it's funny!
And obviously they'll let anything slide for the Generic R while doing whatever they can to destroy the Generic D. At this point I think Howard Dean is probably seen as more psychopathic than Trump if you polled people. OMG but he screamed!
7: My guess is Clinton could fuck up and hurt her position, and there's also nothing she could do that could fundamentally improve her position. The converse is true for Trump, naturally.
I am trying to decide what, if any GOTV, I should do. NH is probably not in the bag, but I hate being the annoying g outif-state person in NH.
I suppose I could do local election stuff.
Good point, I'll have to think of ways to defuse the "fucking Californian" reaction. It would not be diplomatic, I suppose, to say "Your city only exists because it's good at extracting money from Californians."
I doubt most young people know what he Dean scream is.
A member of the class of 2020 has never even heard Howard Dean scream.
I'll have to think of ways to defuse the "fucking Californian" reaction
Yeah, I'm still more inclined to fly "home" to WI for a long weekend than to go to NV. I get to decide on the fly whether they feel like my people in any meaningful sense or not. (There was always estrangement, but it's more "I don't have anything in common with myself" than a specific elective disaffinity with all the Packers flags and beer-sausage kitsch. My family's been there for more than a century, blinking uncomprehendingly and politely at the kitsch.) I think I still have a soothingly nasal, unpleasant upper-midwestern drawl when I need to use it.
No one in Vegas cares if you're from out of state and I'd guess the same is true in much of NV (maybe not, say, Elko or Carson City or a few other places). To an approximation everyone in urban Nevada is not from Nevada. New Hampshire is full backwoods assholes who've been there forever and tax dodging assholes from the rest of the East Coast, so they're more sensitive in that worthless shit state.
I feel more personally responsible for Wisconsin, that's all. Reno is 99.9% not my fault (and 0.1% in-laws). Also 10 electoral votes vs 6.
I canvassed a man in Reno, just to see him vote.
4 I'm not Megan but I was hyperventillating to my on-call statistician and he offered this: "It's ok. The only national tracking poll that has been publishing the last several days is LA times which is methodologically unsound. When people are like 'oh no more polls are showing this,' it's not, it's the same poll, just no one else is doing daily tracking right now. Anyway it has a massive built-in tilt for trump because it corrects for who people say they voted for last election which is insane. They brag about how they're the only poll that corrects for it but there's a very good reason no one corrects for that; more people ALWAYS say they vote for the candidate who won and ESPECIALLY when that winner is still popular (the way obama is)."
On the internet, nobody knows if you're Megan.
29: And after Nixon resigned, polls revealed that hardly anybody had voted for him in his landslide victory in 1972.
"28. She is annoyed by airline bag fees." Really, Drum? Also, she neglected to loot the White House and referred to super-predators only once! tl,dr: Fine. Hillary 2016
Anyway it has a massive built-in tilt for trump because it corrects for who people say they voted for last election which is insane. They brag about how they're the only poll that corrects for it but there's a very good reason no one corrects for that; more people ALWAYS say they vote for the candidate who won and ESPECIALLY when that winner is still popular (the way obama is)."
I'm glad to read this, but I'm also confused. So there are four types of poll answers:
2012 Obama, 2016 Clinton
2012 Obama, 2016 Trump
2012 Romney, 2016 Clinton
2012 Romney, 2016 Trump
All pollsters agree that people lie and say (A) or (B) when the truth is (C) or (D)? But this errant pollster thinks that group (D) is undersampled, so they're pulling people from group (A)?
32: Oh, come on! It's not just a list of positive reasons to vote for Hillary, he's also rebutting all the various bogus reasons why progressives might refuse to vote for her. And at the beginning, he acknowledges there are legitimate reasons for progressives to oppose her.
I hadn't know this before, but I just looked it up.
The key bit:
Results are weighted to match demographic characteristics, such as race and gender, from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey and aligned to the 2012 presidential election outcome using self-reported vote in that election.
This is serious fucknuttery. It's basically how Karl Rove lubricated his head so that it would slide up his ass more easily when he predicted Romney was going to win Ohio.
12: To me, the evidence of the past month is that for changes in polls, the media is only thing that matters. Clinton was crushing Trump, and then we had a month where the media stopped covering Trump accurately and "Clinton was a crook" headlines. That is literally the only thing that's happened.
33.3: They sample, and then reweigh after the fact.
I guess I should go back to reading Nate Silver.
35: So the problem is that these guys aren't correcting for the tendency of people to lie and say they voted for Obama, they're saying that they're massively underpolling stodgy white guys who voted for Romney?
33: Sort of. It is objectively knowable that 55% of voters went for Obama, and 45% of voters went for Romney, in 2012. So this poll asks "Who did you vote for?" and adjusts so that it gets 55% of people who say "I voted for Obama" and 45% of people say, "I voted for Romney."
The problem is that all of the 45% of poll respondents who admit to voting for Romney are telling the truth, but some of the people who say they voted for Obama are lying (because people lie and say they voted for the winner). So the poll sample systematically oversamples people who actually did vote for Romney, who are disproportionately likely to be Trump voters.
Basically 40--specifically, LA times poll is set up so that 25% of its sample is people who say they voted for Romney and 27% people who say they for Obama, the rest say they didn't vote or weren't old enough. But a bunch of those ostensible Obama voters are liars (and probably a bunch of the people who say they didn't vote were actually Romney voters). Anyway, the pollsters think they're correcting to include the correct proportion of historically democratic voters, but really what they're including is "people who will say they like someone popular."
LA times basically says "some may say that this correction is a problem because people lie about voting for popular presidents, but there's no way to tell!" but Nick the Statistician is telling me, no, LA Times, EVERYONE says that, because there there IS a way to tell.
40/42: Plus, you're missing four years of demographic shift. I think that's likely the bigger issue. Compared to 2012, the electorate is less white and more likely to be college educated. They are assuming that if Romney vs. Obama were run again in 2016, the outcome would be the same when it is very likely that Obama would have had a stronger victory.
Whoa, wait a minute- I pointed this out at LGM, this poll is even more fucked up. It's not even asking "who will you vote for" but is asking about % chance you'll vote for someone, then averaging those and calling it the percent who will vote for each person. Which means that Trump nutters, who are 100% all in for Donnie, get their vote counted more in the poll than people say "meh, sure, Hillary 75%". That's not a poll, that's a marketing survey.
Typically, polls ask people which candidate they favor or lean toward. Those who say they don't know or are undecided don't get factored into calculations of candidate support.
The Daybreak poll, by contrast, asks voters, using a 0-to-100 scale, to rate their chances of voting for Clinton, for Trump or for some other candidate. As a result, everyone who responds to the survey has some impact on the results. Because that approach gathers information from everyone in the poll sample, it should give a better read on the many voters who remain ambivalent about their choices.
Using the 0-to-100 scale, however, almost certainly makes the Daybreak poll differ somewhat from other surveys. As with the bounce, any difference that results should shrink as election day gets closer and voters become more certain of their choices.
We ask voters what the chance is that they will vote for Trump, Clinton or someone else, using a 0-100 scale. The overall level of support for each candidate reflects the weighted average of those responses.
The LAT poll is bad, but it's not alone in having Trump pulling even. Maybe alone in daily tracking polls, but I'm not sure what privileges tracking polls unless you're looking for literally the trend between yesterday and the day before.
Other recent results from TPM Polltracker:
Morning Consult: Clinton +2
UPI/CVoter: Trump +1
Fox News: Trump +1
CBS/NYT: Tie
Rasmussen: Trump +2
Quinniapac: Clinton +2
(Excluding those numbers where Johnson and Stein are not options; there, Clinton tends to gain a little.)
36 is my take as well. Or, more precisely, the media can "normalize" an election to make it less like a contest versus crazytown and more like a more normal Republican/Democratic race. I wouldn't have thought crappy media coverage was capable of that, but if Trump gets elected the NY Times has the blood of deported Mexican children on its hands. As do, of course, Jill Stein supporters and whatever halfwits are "either Clinton or Gary Johnson" supporters.
7: Do the debates actually matter at all? Do they actually change anyone's minds?
They probably did in 1980. A tight race with a huge number of undecided/Anderson supporters, one debate for all the marbles a week before the election, and it looks like the undecided broke massively for Reagan over the final weekend, turning a nail-biter into a rout.
Of course, that may not be a particularly comforting example for progressives.
Sorta OT: This Vox summary, via Drum, is pretty convincing regarding the importance of perceived priveledge loss and relative unimportance of economic insecurity in the rise of white nationalism.
I spell privilege badly enough that autocorrect has given up on me.
30: I know if you are Megan.
Heebie, it'll be fine and you're going to win money.
-Hey, we're out of these "It's gonna be Trump" cookies.
-Well open up the "it'll be fine and you're going to win money" barrel.
Trump sucks up all the media oxygen. He makes himself look like a moron, but literally the only thing reported about Hillary is her reaction to Trump's latest outrage, or (even worse) his latest bullshit accusation against her.
The only other coverage Hillary gets is for e-mails and the Clinton Foundation. Or when something blows up.
The nitwits are going to blame Hillary for this. "She should be more transparent, and shouldn't be so suspicious of the media." Why the fuck should she do that?
And Megan is right, of course.
The thing about debates is that it doesn't matter in the slightest who wins; it matters who the media says wins. You can always find clips to support your narrative - even if it's only someone sighing too much.
I think that in the end, the elite media dislikes Trump more than Hillary, and they will craft a narrative to fuck him over no matter what happens in the debates.
Sort of related: I was amused by the NYT's use of the word "lie" in a headline about Trump and birtherism. They saved that word to use for the first time Trump ever publicly spoke the truth on the subject. I trust that Trump has learned his lesson.
Y'all can have your blog back now.
I've decided to just assume that Trump will win for reasons that I will find completely inexplicable. The oligarchy that runs the country largely hates him, and he has openly threatened journalists with prosecution if elected, and yet the media spent the last month trying to throw the election to Trump. Nothing makes any sense anymore. I think aliens are stepping up their experiments to see what happens next.
The fact that the oligarchy hates him makes him look like a tribune of the people (in the same 'classless' socialism-of-fools vein) and is a big reason he is doing so well.
Though I don't think the oligarchy hates him, just the gentry class.
See, that's explicating. It will be inexplicable.
I've decided to just assume that Trump will win for reasons that I will find completely inexplicable. The oligarchy that runs the country largely hates him, and he has openly threatened journalists with prosecution if elected, and yet the media spent the last month trying to throw the election to Trump.
I think our oligarchy is too big. As we saw in the GOP nomination process, no single one of them takes responsibility for keeping things under control at the highest level anymore; they just assume everyone keeping to their own wheelhouse and making money will be enough.
26: there's also Maine, but their tax rates are quite high. And their governor is an ass. I really don't understand how Le Page got elected. Baldacci was ok, and Angus King is pretty moderate. They're pretty sensitive about people coming from Massachusetts and driving up the price of things.
I was just going to write what 63 said. Why the fuck is the media trying to throw this to Trump? WTF is going on here? It feels like when Bush II situation magnified times infinity, where you have an obviously incompetent evil moron who lies giant and obvious lies nonstop and the media inexplicably pretends they are normal.
I really don't understand how Le Page got elected.
By plowing through a wide field (my BIL was in that race as a CoC kind of Republican, and came in dead last IIRC) behind the libertarian/moron oxen that constitute a plurality of Maine voters.
8: it still comes down to Generic D vs. Generic R
This is an interesting way to frame it.
The media's egregious both-sides-do-it-ism may be an attempt to render it so. Certainly it's true that the media is the only thing that matters -- it's been shocking to me the extent to which the mainstream media have landed on a narrative from which they will not diverge, reality be damned.
I mean: I've listened to half a dozen journalists declare in the last couple of days that attention to the issues, the issues, policy prescriptions dammit, have been glossed over by both candidates, dammit. [What? Clinton gives policy speeches several times a month.] That Clinton made a decision early on to go negative, and that's lamentable, innit? [What? Most of her speeches and rallies are, well, forward looking, discussion of policy proposals.] That Clinton doesn't really stand for anything, hasn't presented a unifying theme, while Trump is clear, "Make America great again." [What? Clinton's motto is "Stronger Together." She goes on about it all the time.]
I begin to think that these journalists aren't actually attending to reality, but listening only to each other.
At any rate, regarding the linked Drum post: far too few voters know the actual policy proposals of the candidates. It's good to remember that.
Hey look, more email bullshit on the horizon!
What annoys me is that the Senate and even the House were in reach at one point, and somehow that all evaporated. WTF?
I think that in the end, the elite media dislikes Trump more than Hillary, and they will craft a narrative to fuck him over no matter what happens in the debates.
This seems right to me. The media turned on Trump surprisingly viciously over his birther stunt last week. I think they give him a lot of coverage because he makes for good copy, but they don't actually like him or want him to be president.
Of course then the terrorist bombs took over the news cycle and who knows how coverage of that is going to shake out.
73: The media turned on Trump surprisingly viciously over his birther stunt last week
In part because his attempt to get them to make an infomercial for his hotel was too heavy-handed and pissed them off. That said, I do think some of them are getting spooked and relaizing he is just going to run out the clock on things like his taxes and Foundation.
In part because his attempt to get them to make an infomercial for his hotel was too heavy-handed and pissed them off.
Yeah, for sure. But they really were legitimately pissed off, and the coverage was pretty much universally scathing.
BTW, this is the best description of exactly how thoroughly Trump played the media on that one. For the benefit of those who, like me, don't even own a TV.
For some insight into the nihilism of some in the press, the second entry here (feature on undecided voters) is reputedly from "Politics reporter, 42, Washington, D.C.". (It almost reads like something from The Onion. but having followed a lot of DC political press on Twitter this year, it seems to fit the mood of many):
...
I cannot stomach Hillary Clinton. I just can't get with her. Maybe because I know too much. I find so much of her world hypocritical, reprehensible. I think the rest of the country sort of gives her a pass, like, "Oh, she's always been attacked by Republicans, it's not that big a deal, email shmemail!" But I'm like, "WHAT! This is a huge deal."
And then I also obviously struggle with Donald Trump. The things I like about him are: I believe that sometimes you just have to blow shit up to build it again, and I think that a Trump presidency would do that.
I cover this stuff every day. So for me, four years of Trump, selfishly, sounds a lot more enticing, just because it's going to be a dumpster fire. And a Clinton administration would be more of what we're seeing now, which is carefully orchestrated speeches, behind-the-scenes Wealthy McWealthysons going in and out of the White House, and really horrible transparency with the press.
Gun to my head, I would probably vote Trump because of my feelings about Hillary, and my--I just want to see what happens. But if I were to talk to you tomorrow, I'd be like, "Ugh! I've gotta vote for Hillary!"
I think about 25% chance that the US experiment as we know comes to an end or grossly transforms in the next 20 years and this will be why; it just got to boring and mundane. Not without precedent.
78.last: Eh, "as we know [it]" is doing a lot of work there. The US experiment as we know it today is very different from the versions from the 1770s, 1820s, 1850s, 1890s, and 1920s, just to name a few. I would say there were gross transformations between all of those, some for the better and some for the worse, as well as at least one between the 1920s and now.
If there is any solace in the immediate term, it is that *some* of the poll leakage can be attributed to this being the time when pollsters switch from registered to likely voters. Clinton has been losing 2 to 4 points in those, so those polls have shown somewhat less tightening from earlier iterations than they show at first glance. Only small comfort as they basically indicate it was a bit closer before in terms of likely voters. (And there is a lot of debate about how good LV screens are--in the case of Obama they were not very good, as he apparently motivated higher turnout among "unlikely" voters--part of why 2012 looked closer than it turned out, But not sure if HRC gets that affect.)
80: Don't cloud my cloud with facts and insight. I won't stand for it!
81 is a good point, that I've seen made elsewhere. It's quite possible that it was the August polls that were inaccurate, not the September ones. Not that that's much comfort.
82: You're not the boss of me!
And on that point, I think the best way to contextualize the "pizza/kill and eat you" metaphor is to add that they had killed and eaten your parents and grandparents years ago, but that was in the past and you thought they had gotten over it and moved on to normal food, but apparently not. Still very scary, but not totally out of the blue.
I am getting to the point where I am contemplating retirement (reaching that age), but until the past week or so had not really taken the urges seriously as they are probably due to 9 months of being all in on a very large stressful initiative at work (so i did not trust my instincts). But my current thinking is that if Trump wind I will retire, as I would like my personal associations in that scenario to be of my own choosing rather than mandatory. The fuck if I'm going to work alongside those motherfuckers (Trump voters) if he wins.
Trump is still probably not going to win, but even if he doesn't you're probably justified in not wanting to work alongside people who voted for him.
I realize that is an indulgence that I can entertain given the timing but most cannot. I would hope I would become involved in the Dem party or ACLU some form of "resistance" in that case, but inertia and sloth might have their way.
I've been quite happy with the results of getting more involved with the local Dems, but you may not have quite the same priorities.
Maybe someone can slip a killer virus* into a song like "Locomotive Breath" or the Bob Seger catalog and knock off all of us useless olds. (Probably need to infect some C&W classic as well.)
*Something along the lines of Snowcrash; I want to say nam-shub of Enki, but I think that is the antidote.
The thing about waiting for people to die, though, is that you just have to be patient. No additional effort required.
Preventing the olds from electing someone like Trump does take some effort, admittedly. But I think we're on it. HRC's campaign does seem to be pretty nimble in addressing concerns as they come up.
The campaign seems to be stymied now by the realization that there may be people who voted for Obama and will now vote for Trump. Does this mean not all Trump voters are white supremacists? Cognitive dissonance.
Anyone who votes for Trump is willing to vote for an open racist for president. Is indifference to racism a manifestation of white supremacy? I'd say so.
We can try to pretend that the putative liberal who just wants to shake things up by voting for Trump isn't a racist, but that just seems like an effort to draw a distinction where none exists.
Question: What's the white part of birdshit?
Answer: That's birdshit, too.
With regards to the coverage and what Americans are talking about, this bit of Gallup research and accompanying piece in the NYTimes are both fascinating and infuriating. A quick glance at the word clouds in the Gallup article say it all; for Hilary it's *EMAIL* to an astounding degree.
The kicker is in the commentary the Gallup editor provided in the Times:
When Matt Lauer of NBC News questioned Clinton about her emails for a third of the allotted time during the commander-in-chief forum on MSNBC earlier this month, he was criticized for focusing on an irrelevant issue. But the research shows that the relevance of Mrs. Clinton's emails is very real in the minds of average Americans.
Duh, you fucking moron fuck; maybe because insipid lickspittles like Lauer act as if it is so important it deserves a prominent place in a very limited team discussion of national security.
The campaign seems to be stymied now by the realization that there may be people who voted for Obama and will now vote for Trump. Does this mean not all Trump voters are white supremacists? Cognitive dissonance.
I missed this upthread. CN, looks like you are moron fuck curious. Don't succumb.
NYTimes article in 93 makes blood boil.
84 - but they were eaten in their turn
by fools in old-style hats and coats
who half the time were soppy stern
and half at one another's throats.
A quick glance at the word clouds in the Gallup article say it all; for Hilary it's *EMAIL* to an astounding degree.
What's infuriating is that I'm completely convinced that, had Clinton used two separated devices as SoS, that there would be _something_ which would dominate to that degree (and which, like the e-mail, would have a nugget of an actual problem surrounded by huge fluffy clouds of manufactured controversy).
I don't think there's an alternate history in which Clinton becomes the nominee without spending months (or years) being chased by some absurd, ultimately meaningless aspersions.
Can you please convince my father of that? He's stuck on 'if she just hadn't' and can't grasp that it doesn't matter. Sure, the personal server wasn't ideal, but whatever she did, it would have been some equivalent bullshit.
had Clinton used two separated devices as SoS, that there would be _something_ which would dominate to that degree (and which, like the e-mail, would have a nugget of an actual problem surrounded by huge fluffy clouds of manufactured controversy
Or maybe not even the nugget of an actual problem. Look at the fuss over the Clinton Foundation.
Probably would have been more focus on the foundation, and probably Abedin's connection to Weiner exposing state to blackmail. I don't know if they would have found something new but certainly the outrage and the news cycles would have transferred 1:1 to some other existing thing that is currently slightly less covered due to time spent talking about email. I mean, just pick the next largest words from the cloud.
97: Yeah, this. People who talk about how Hillary should be a better candidate or should be running a better campaign have no clue what she's up against.
The Bush administration conveniently lost millions of e-mails relevant to an investigation into whether the federal government was engaged in a conspiracy to falsely accuse people of voter fraud in order to advance the goal of disenfranchising minorities. But Hillary had her own e-mail server and erased tens of thousands of e-mails whose content we have no reason to believe was suspicious.
Trump signed a check to make an illegal payment to a prosecutor with jurisdiction to investigate him, but it's the Clinton Foundation that's a scandal.
Diplomats got killed in attacks on embassies during the Bush administration, but Benghazi is what gets the ink.
The Trump support seems to be a combination of resentful white nationalists and people who dislike Hillary Clinton enough (for reasons sexist or ideological) to be recklessly indifferent to the white nationalism. The media obsession with trivialities, aided and abetted by peominent Clinton haters, seem to have given enough cover for the recklessly indifferent to vote for the white nationalist party. That's I think the entire story of the polls narrowing.
Whatever happens, no election cycle has left me personally as distrustful of the American populace, both "left" and right. But it's not just an American thing (Brexit, Hungary, the FN on France, etc.). There's a real problem when democracy combines with resentful white people filled with fear at losing their set of cultural privileges. And there's basically nothing to do about it other than to wait for these people to die and/or be demographically overwhelmed, which is what happened in California.
But no problems, in twenty years or so we will finally have the legislative majority to allow us to start applying targeted economic incentives to reduce the use of fossil fuels and the climate will totally take a breather until then and let us catch up.
102 last is probably right. But although HRC has many faults, it is incomprehensible to me how people who might otherwise vote Democrat could consider not doing so in the context of a Trump candidacy unless the Democratic Convention had actually nominated Lyndon Larouche? Are they so fucking pig ignorant and complacent that they don't understand that even a strong and durable political system can break under sufficient pressure?
I think it's a combo of pig ignorance and the tendency to treat politics purely as a vehicle for personal expression, which the internet has facilitated. And also a small but real chunk of (mostly white) Democrats are either susceptible to or largely indifferent to the siren song of white nationalism.
I think it's a combo of pig ignorance and the tendency to treat politics purely as a vehicle for personal expression, which the internet has facilitated. And also a small but real chunk of (mostly white) Democrats are either susceptible to or largely indifferent to the siren song of white nationalism.
That wasn't smart enough to say twice, and was to 104.
fucking Chomsky
Wait, what's his number?
So, really now, what's the best way for Clinton to convince people that she's not itching to start a war? Because that seems to me to be the biggest problem among persuadable voters.
I'd need to know first why they think she is itching to start one. (a) She's garnered support from some neocons; (b) She pushed for intervention in Libya; (c) She supported, at least at some point, establishing a no-fly zone in Syria.
Anything else?
Oh, yeah.
I'm surprised that that would seem to be the biggest problem for persuadable voters. My sense has been more that they just don't think a Trump presidency would be that awful. (Which is shocking.)
She started her campaign criticizing Obama as too dovish. Trump has, at times, sounded like he comes from the Buchanan, isolationist wing of the Republicans.
I'm not sure it's possible to make a case for Clinton without at the same time making a case against Trump.
Trump's policies, as he's rolled them out -- such as they are -- are increasingly indistinguishable in many respects from standard Republican orthodoxy (on steroids). The idea that Trump is more dovish than Clinton is laughable.
The best way for Clinton to convince people she's not itching for a war is to carefully and clearly explain the ways in which she is not doing so. I believe she's already done that, emphasizing the importance of diplomacy and cooperative coalitions, and so on. If she needs to state it more plainly, okay.
So, really now, what's the best way for Clinton to convince people that she's not itching to start a war? Because that seems to me to be the biggest problem among persuadable voters.
This is crazy. If they're concerned about foreign policy, then they could take a page from every single foreign policy expert about keeping Trump far, far away.
101: This is an important point. I'm sure Clinton hasn't run a perfect campaign, but it basically doesn't matter what kind of campaign she runs. She either drops out of the news, or the media covers total bullshit.
Right, who are the persuadable people whose election concern is that HC is too hawkish? Like 500 Glenn Greewnwald readers who might vote for Stein or Johnson? I sort of feel like if you can name more than 3 foreign countries and don't want to go to war with any of the three you are definitely not voting for Trump.
Now I'm picturing the voter who can name only three countries but wants to go to war with all of them.
THREE COUNTRIES I KNOW ARE CANADIA MEXICANS AND ARABIA AND I SAY 'S BOMB EM ALL
Since I'm being punished by God for my transgressions, I think I've read comments by all 500 of them.
Right, who are the persuadable people whose election concern is that HC is too hawkish? Like 500 Glenn Greewnwald readers who might vote for Stein or Johnson? I sort of feel like if you can name more than 3 foreign countries and don't want to go to war with any of the three you are definitely not voting for Trump.
The whole "dove" / "hawk" idea confuses us into thinking everyone who is opposed to a war is a pacifist. In the 21st century surely there are more people who say
A) The war is a waste of taxpayer money
B) The war is run by bleeding-heart do-gooders trying to spread democracy and women's rights, we should only go to war to kill our enemies and steal their land
C) We lost the war, I could have won if I was president because I'd let our brave boys take the gloves off, but it's too late now, just give up already
Oh hey I got my absentee ballot today. Apparently I can vote by email, who knew.
I have a lower Erdős number than Chomsky? I don't have a Bacon number though.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/rfk-trump-2016-democratic-party-speechwriter-214270
But really I'm thinking more of millennials.
125: That's really amazing. So Clinton is an intemperate warmonger because she sees a bit of something like the Sudetenland in Russian's annexation of Crimea? Huh.
125 - "I am a moron. Here are some words."
Close elections are decided by people who are, or are influenced by, morons. Hence the somewhat offensive ongoing effort to get non-morons to avoid saying things in public that might lead morons to the wrong conclusion.
True, but I don't know that there are a lot of similar morons who are being led into the arms of Trump by this particular moronic argument. I could be wrong because literally all Trump voters are incomprehensible morons*, so who knows what the fuck any of them are thinking.
*OK, I guess the hardcore white nationalists are comprehensible morons.
The differences between polling a 2 way race and a 4 way race suggest that Clinton is losing voters to Johnson. Even that's 1/3 warmonger vs. 2/3 emails, it's still worth a play.
125: Christ, what an asshole.
49: Contrawise, two days later: https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/778720429980561409:
#POLLS 9/21
■NBC/WSJ: Clinton +7
■ST.L: C+5
■ARG: C+3
■QUIN: C+5
■MORN: C+4
■POLLY: C+6
■GOOG: C+1
■YOUGOV: C+2
■REU: Tied
■ABC: C+8
I have a lower Erdős number than Chomsky? I don't have a Bacon number though.
If home movies count Chomsky probably has a low Bacon number too. Both families were part of the same midcentury Philadelphia social circle of intellectual UMC professionals (which also included my grandparents), though I don't know if they were particularly close.
I assume the typo/grammatical error in the first sentence of that post is also there for a reason.
137: It does not count. God, personal connections already count for too much in this world, and you want to make them count for Erdos numbers too? You're basically worse than Trump.
Well, I just voted for Hillary, so I'm done worrying about all this shit.
