**** Elections thread *****

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Originally Posted by Renton

You can blame the DNC for that. Bernie Sanders was exactly that independent candidate, and he would have smoked Trump.

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I think the Bernie thing is kind of playing Monday morning QB. As you know, I'm a big Bernie supporter and with the advantage of hindsight, I agree he would have fared better in the general election, but he ran head-to-head against Clinton and he lost by a comfy margin. You can argue that she didn't win fair and square, but she won on the backs of the most disenfranchised voters. She literally won Alabama black voters by 90 fucking points. Obviously her appeal in scarlet states and disappointments in the Rust Belt ended up being a harbinger of things to come, but Bernie didn't appeal to enough people in his own party to win the nomination and would have been an extremist on the national stage, so I think it's a bit results-oriented to think he was the solution.

Probably the worst thing the Democratic party did was "step aside" so that Hillary could take her turn (especially since she already had her turn and lost to someone with no name recognition). Who knows who would have stepped forward, much less won, but it's hard to imagine a worst-case-scenario than where they ended up by November 1st.

I guess regardless of where you put the blame, the lesson is the same. Don't torpedo your own electorate. Trust them to vote for the person they like and live with the decision, because the party doesn't always know best and they might be blinded by the wrong priorities.

I agree. When fewer white women vote for another white woman than for a misogynist/sexual deviant, there's clearly something weird going on. Marriage seemed to play a role as well - maybe a lot of those married women who voted Trump were just the types who tend to vote for whoever their husband votes for.

The same kind of demographic voted for Trump as we saw vote Brexit in the UK... white, poor, uneducated. This is the demographic of people who have been left behind by the system, those that slog their lives away doing a job they hate just to survive. I suspect the establishment are paying the price for allowing the wealth gap to reach the point it has. People might be uneducated, but they're waking up to the way the world really works. They're not buying the bullshit anymore. The main stream media is no longer capable of controlling the masses. These are interesting times we live in.

It was like watching Brexit all over again, as the thriving population centres with their commerce voted for the status quo, while the rural villages and suburb towns that the establisment ignores, that suffer at the expense of the cities, voted for change.

Well done USA. You've outdone the British, this is much bigger than Brexit. I didn't think the Yanks had the balls to do this, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Even if he fails, it's clear that it's not just the British people who want rid of the corrupt system that is forced upon us, that we want economic and political reform.

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

I agree. When fewer white women vote for another white woman than for a misogynist/sexual deviant, there's clearly something weird going on. Marriage seemed to play a role as well - maybe a lot of those married women who voted Trump were just the types who tend to vote for whoever their husband votes for.

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What utter nonesnese. You're so far deep into the corporate media's bullshit that you can hardly breathe. Women in America are amongst the most fiercly independant in the world, I really can't imagine there is a significant number of women who blindly follow their husband's political will. This isn't Afghanistan.

Women didn't vote for Hillary in the numbers she hoped because they saw through the manipulation. I know you think that when I talk about corruption and Satanism, that I'm talking out of my arse for the sake of trolling. But this is all in the Wikileaks files that the main stream media did their best to ignore.

You talk about Trump being a sexual deviant like it's fact. There are people who claim to have been sexually abused by Hillary. Neither are proven. So your claim that he's a sexual deviant has no more merit than my claim that she's a sexual deviant. Well, actually my claim has more merit because Hillary is married to, and stood by, someone who was proven to have lied in court about sexual relations with that woman.

More people see Clinton for what she really is than you realise. That's why she lost. It has nothing to do with women sheeping their husbands.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

The same kind of demographic voted for Trump as we saw vote Brexit in the UK... white, poor, uneducated. This is the demographic of people who have been left behind by the system, those that slog their lives away doing a job they hate just to survive. I suspect the establishment are paying the price for allowing the wealth gap to reach the point it has. People might be uneducated, but they're waking up to the way the world really works. They're not buying the bullshit anymore. The main stream media is no longer capable of controlling the masses. These are interesting times we live in.

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And yet the black, poor uneducated people still voted for her, and they're getting shafted by the system more than their white equivalents. So you need to explain that one.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

It was like watching Brexit all over again, as the thriving population centres with their commerce voted for the status quo, while the rural villages and suburb towns that the establisment ignores, that suffer at the expense of the cities, voted for change.

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These rural places don't suffer because of the establishment. Rural areas have always been poorer than cities. And how is 'the establishment' supposed to correct this? Just dump money into poor, unproductive areas, and hope they start thriving?

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Well done USA. You've outdone the British, this is much bigger than Brexit. I didn't think the Yanks had the balls to do this, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Even if he fails, it's clear that it's not just the British people who want rid of the corrupt system that is forced upon us, that we want economic and political reform.

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...and that we're willing to stab ourselves in the face to get it. Wake up and smell reality: Trump doesn't give a shit about wrecking the establishment. He's a narcissistic demagogue. He just said the shit people wanted to hear, same as Obama 8 years ago, promising change and not delivering. Trump might build a wall and big up the army, but that's not going to solve America's problems anymore than leaving the EU will solve ours.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

What utter nonesnese. You're so far deep into the corporate media's bullshit that you can hardly breathe.

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You're so stick-it-to-the-man that you instantly, reflexively believe the opposite of everything that comes from someone in authority, without ever considering some of what you may hear from the mainstream is true, and not just designed to keep you toeing the line.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Women in America are amongst the most fiercly independant in the world, I really can't imagine there is a significant number of women who blindly follow their husband's political will. This isn't Afghanistan.

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It's not about blindly following their husband's will, as if the husband orders the wife how to vote. It's more subtle than that. Women are cooperators, they prefer to be in a marriage that's in political harmony rather than vote against their partner. That's what I meant. And I bet it happens in a lot of countries, not just the US.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Women didn't vote for Hillary in the numbers she hoped because they saw through the manipulation. I know you think that when I talk about corruption and Satanism, that I'm talking out of my arse for the sake of trolling. But this is all in the Wikileaks files that the main stream media did their best to ignore.

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Yes, and the MSM also did their best to ignore a lot of other kooky shit. What's funny here is that you're more willing to accept this tin hat Satanism crap as being legit, than consider the likelihood that your precious alternate media is just as corrupted as the MSM, only in a different way. Next you'll be quoting Alex Jones and the lizard theory and saying it must be true because it's from someone outside the MSM.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

You talk about Trump being a sexual deviant like it's fact. There are people who claim to have been sexually abused by Hillary. Neither are proven. So your claim that he's a sexual deviant has no more merit than my claim that she's a sexual deviant. Well, actually my claim has more merit because Hillary is married to, and stood by, someone who was proven to have lied in court about sexual relations with that woman.

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When a guy says he would date his daughter if she weren't his daughter, that one thing they both love is sex, that poses with her on his lap cradling his face (when she's 15 ffs, not 6), and touches her on the hips, none of this is up for debate or unproven. Whether or not he sexually assaulted women is an open question, but the guy definitely has his own way of sexualizing his daughter that ignores basic social mores. You're telling me that kind of behavior isn't fucked up?

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Originally Posted by poop

And yet the black, poor uneducated people still voted for her, and they're getting shafted by the system more than their white equivalents. So you need to explain that one.

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She got less of the black vote than Obama did, so she underperformed in this regard.

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These rural places don't suffer because of the establishment. Rural areas have always been poorer than cities. And how is 'the establishment' supposed to correct this? Just dump money into poor, unproductive areas, and hope they start thriving?

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Economic policy is what makes these areas poor. If rural areas are always poorer than cities, it's because economic policy has always favoured cities. These places are not "unproductive", they are the agricultural heart of the nation. It's not a case of puring money into the countryside, it's a case of protecting the industries that the people who live in rural areas depend on.

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Trump might build a wall and big up the army, but that's not going to solve America's problems anymore than leaving the EU will solve ours.

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I'm not saying anything will change. All I'm saying is it's much more likely now than it was yesterday. At the very least, the people want change. That is clear. Is Trump the man to deliver it? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. But there's hope that he will, and there's even more hope that eventually the people will force it, because the will is clearly there.

The establishment can no longer afford to ignore the will of the people, becase the people have shown that they can no longer be controlled by fear via media.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

She got less of the black vote than Obama did, so she underperformed in this regard.

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Well, she's not black.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Economic policy is what makes these areas poor. If rural areas are always poorer than cities, it's because economic policy has always favoured cities. These places are not "unproductive", they are the agricultural heart of the nation. It's not a case of puring money into the countryside, it's a case of protecting the industries that the people who live in rural areas depend on.

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No, it's that concentrating population favours economic growth and development, which tends to take place in the areas that favour it (cities).

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

I'm not saying anything will change. All I'm saying is it's much more likely now than it was yesterday. At the very least, the people want change. That is clear. Is Trump the man to deliver it? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. But there's hope that he will, and there's even more hope that eventually the people will force it, because the will is clearly there.

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We'll find out. I have a very fresh memory of the excitement generated by Obama's election eight years ago. Nothing really changed, and if anything it got worse. Not saying that's his fault necessarily, but just that change is easier said than done.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

The establishment can no longer afford to ignore the will of the people, becase the people have shown that they can no longer be controlled by fear via media.

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That's a pretty myopic view of what happened imo. People did want change, that's for sure. The idea that they suddenly and collectively woke up to the idea that the MSM was brainwashing them all these years sounds a bit fantastic though. There's probably a better explanation.

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Yes, and the MSM also did their best to ignore a lot of other kooky shit. What's funny here is that you're more willing to accept this tin hat Satanism crap as being legit, than consider the likelihood that your precious alternate media is just as corrupted as the MSM, only in a different way. Next you'll be quoting Alex Jones and the lizard theory and saying it must be true because it's from someone outside the MSM.

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Alex Jones gets on my tits, I can't stand his voice.

You're resorting to mockery again. I'm not bothered by this, just pointing it out because it demonstrates once more that you're influenced by main stream media. When all else fails, play the "conspiracy nut" card.

I don't buy lizard theory, neither do I dismiss it. We'd be talking about aliens. Why is that so ridiculous? It's viable, from a scientific pov. We're not talking about ghosts here. We're talking about advanced lifeforms. I'd say that indulging such a theory is somewhat less ridiculous than the idea of a god who created the world in six days, then took a day off. Yet you throw lizard theory at me like it's supposed to show me for some kind of nutjob. If you were mocking my religion, you'd probably be committing a hate crime.

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When a guy says he would date his daughter if she weren't his daughter, that one thing they both love is sex, that poses with her on his lap cradling his face (when she's 15 ffs, not 6), and touches her on the hips, none of this is up for debate or unproven. Whether or not he sexually assaulted women is an open question, but the guy definitely has his own way of sexualizing his daughter that ignores basic social mores. You're telling me that kind of behavior isn't fucked up?

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She seems very much proud of her Father. Maybe we should leave her to decide if his behaviour is inappropriate. It seems to me like you're the one sexualising his behaviour. I wouldn't think twice about touching my 15 y/o daughter's hips, or having her sit on my lap, because I would have no sexual motive to do so. If I did so, it would be an embrace, nothing more than a hug. Fucked up? It's different, but I wouldn't say fucked up. If she felt uncomfortable with his behaviour, and he did it anyway, then it's fucked up. Do you think she is being abused? That's what is "fucked up". Abuse.

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Well, she's not black.

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But she was endorsed by the current black President, and was up against someone the media presented as racist. She should be matching Obama's share of the vote. She didn't because some black people felt manipulated, and either voted for Trump, a third party, or didn't vote at all.

Furthermore, one has to consider how anyone knows what the black share of the vote is. Based on how we vote here in the UK, all that you put on the voting slip is your vote. There's no personal information, which means the information they are using to determine vote shares is probably from exit polls. Someone step in and correct me if I'm wrong. How many black people will openly admit to voting for Trump? Those numbers might not be rock solid.

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That's a pretty myopic view of what happened imo. People did want change, that's for sure. The idea that they suddenly and collectively woke up to the idea that the MSM was brainwashing them all these years sounds a bit fantastic though. There's probably a better explanation.

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It's not sudden. This has been slowly happening since 9/11. Regardless of your opinion on that event, there can be no doubt that it was the single most important event in the history of conspiracy theories. At that point, a lot of people thought "anything is possible". Many people bought the real story, but over time have become more suspicious. Many more people still don't believe 9/11 was bullshit, but still think the world is run by corrupt bankers and politicians. As time goes by, more and more people start believing.

If you don't think that's happening, I don't know what to say, other than it certainly seems to be the case.

I'm not interested in gloating and I don't want anybody to eat crow. I just want the world to be a better place and people to be happier. Besides, I was only half right. I thought Trump would beat Romney's proportion by closer to 7 than the ~3.5 he did.

I hope that there's still some goodwill left for me here, and I ask that you guys consider what I have to say in this post.

Fear of Trump was the message. It was crafted by Robert Cialdini (this is all but confirmed), the foremost guru of the psychology of persuasion and Obama's advisor on the issue. During the times when Cialdini was not on book tour, Clinton's message about Trump was on point. He was "dark" and "unfit" and might launch a nuke if he had a bad day. This message was coordinated with the media, including CNN, MSNBC, and a ton of the most popular publications. The name of the game was to persuade voters that whenever they thought of Trump, they saw an unhinged, scary man. The goal was to make the voter feel real fear at the idea of this unhinged, scary man getting access to the nuclear codes.

But it was just a message, and it did not reflect reality. While Clinton was the one that proclaimed the desire to install a no-fly zone in Syria (which military generals said would start a war), Trump was deescalating the war drums regarding Russia. The message was that Trump was both Putin's buddy and that he wanted to go to war with Putin, a contradiction in premise. While Clinton proved that she was unfit for office by grossly and criminally mishandling classified information, the message was that Trump didn't release his tax returns and has tweeted with emotion; therefore he might attack China on a whim. While Clinton was implicitly endorsing the terrorist behavior of BLM in murdering innocent police officers and assaulting innocent whites on the basis of their skin color, the message was that Trump once said (about illegal aliens) "Mexico is sending their worst"; therefore he was racist against all Latinos. While Clinton was wife to an almost-completely-confirmed sexual predator and she had a rife history of running smear campaigns against his accusers, the message was that Trump called Rosie O'Donnell fat; therefore he hates women and wants to harm them. While Trump never once attacked American voters, Clinton labeled Trump supporters (people like me) "deplorable" and "irredeemable", equating us to Nazis and giving the green light to intimidation and violence against us. The message was loud and clear. It was to scare me, scare you, and scare everybody into thinking that Trump would doom us all if he got the keys to the White House. And it had no basis in fact.

Did the message work? Hell, yes, it worked. It got Sam Harris, Sam fucking Harris, to fear that Trump might get us all killed. It got millions of voters to shiver at the thought of President Trump. It will take at least many months and probably closer to many years for the feeling that Trump is a danger to our safety to wear off. Now that Trump will be President, the hoaxing media has lost its competitive edge at manipulating what people see and hear regarding Trump. The healing will take time, but it will come. We will be safer and more prosperous by the end of it.




As for what's coming, there is great reason to view the next four years with optimism. Contrast the Trump phenomenon to the Obama phenomenon. In 2008, we rejoiced, for we had made great strides in one of our nation's greatest sadnesses, and elected the first black President. He was unvetted and unaccomplished, but we did great. The world celebrated. And then, over the course of the next 7 years, everything he touched turned worse than if he had done nothing. Race relations are worse now than when he entered office, the Middle East is in greater turmoil, and the economy is on an unusually weak business cycle upswing and unusually vulnerable to calamity. We came to the cliff's edge again by almost electing the first woman President on similar grounds of identity politics and virtue signalling.

How is this different than a Trump presidency? it's different because he got elected based not on which perceived marginalized group he belongs to, but because of what he said he would do for the country and its citizens. This means that if he does not do them, his support will vanish. If the economy does not get remarkably better, he will lose 2020. If illegal entry and overstay continues to hound the fabric of our country, he will get the boot. If cops are still getting gunned down in the streets or if ISIS has a net improvement in territory or if Russia turns more belligerent or if healthcare keeps rising so rapidly, he will lose every bit of the 2020 election. This is the kind of President we want, one who has no choice but to perform. I'll predict right here and right now that the next four years will be substantially better than the last four years, and I can do that with confidence because we'll have a President whose legacy depends not on how he was born, but by what he does for the American people.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

You're resorting to mockery again. I'm not bothered by this, just pointing it out because it demonstrates once more that you're influenced by main stream media. When all else fails, play the "conspiracy nut" card.

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I'm not resorting to mockery, I'm just explaining the flaw in your way of thinking. You have the idea that one side of the story is reliable and the other isn't, and it's because you choose the side that fits with your world view, independent of whether or not there is any hard evidence one way or another.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

I don't buy lizard theory, neither do I dismiss it. We'd be talking about aliens. Why is that so ridiculous? It's viable, from a scientific pov. We're not talking about ghosts here. We're talking about advanced lifeforms. I'd say that indulging such a theory is somewhat less ridiculous than the idea of a god who created the world in six days, then took a day off. Yet you throw lizard theory at me like it's supposed to show me for some kind of nutjob. If you were mocking my religion, you'd probably be committing a hate crime.

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Just making a point that there's a lot of theories out there on the alt media that have zero basis in fact. Whether or not they're theoretically possible is irrelevant. If I call you an alien who's out to control my mind while you're running for gov't, and some people believe it, that's more of a hate crime than saying it's a stupid theory.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

She seems very much proud of her Father. Maybe we should leave her to decide if his behaviour is inappropriate. It seems to me like you're the one sexualising his behaviour. I wouldn't think twice about touching my 15 y/o daughter's hips, or having her sit on my lap, because I would have no sexual motive to do so. If I did so, it would be an embrace, nothing more than a hug. Fucked up? It's different, but I wouldn't say fucked up. If she felt uncomfortable with his behaviour, and he did it anyway, then it's fucked up. Do you think she is being abused? That's what is "fucked up". Abuse.

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Don't think any woman is comfortable with her father putting his hand on her hips. But judge for yourself. I'm not an expert in body language, but when a woman pulls away from a man touching her on the hips, seems that's a sign she's uncomfortable. What a surprise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtvK1Biaq9Q

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtvK1Biaq9Q

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I remember watching this at the time and noticing the sexual behavior. Let me provide an alternative explanation.

Imagine you're a goat-herder in year 300 Mongolia. Imagine there's this big gathering where all herders in a fifty mile radius come together once a year to trade and negotiate marriages. Imagine you have a 15 year old daughter who needs a husband and there's a great ceremony where all the eligible daughters show off their stuff, and later the bachelors negotiate with the fathers on which ones they want to marry the most. Well, if you present your daughter in this ceremony, do you think perhaps you might want to signal to the bachelors just how sexy she is? Might you briefly touch her on her hip? Might you do this so that the bachelors might think for a split second "wow if even her father thinks she's hot, she must be so hot..." Or might they think "hand on hip=sexy therefore girl=sexy". Or maybe it will be purely instinctive and the bachelors will experience a boost in testosterone without realizing why.

Trump's game is all about persuading people. Trump's base adores Ivanka pretty much because she is every bachelor's ideal wife. She's gorgeous, humble, and not intimidating. It is very likely that Trump knows that briefly touching her hip on stage will get many of the men in his audience more excited about Trump.

You're a psychologist right? This type of thing is right up your alley.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I remember watching this at the time and noticing the sexual behavior. Let me provide an alternative explanation.

Imagine you're a goat-herder in year 300 Mongolia. Imagine there's this big gathering where all herders in a fifty mile radius come together once a year to trade and negotiate marriages. Imagine you have a 15 year old daughter who needs a husband and there's a great ceremony where all the eligible daughters show off their stuff, and later the bachelors negotiate with the fathers on which ones they want to marry the most. Well, if you present your daughter in this ceremony, do you think perhaps you might want to signal to the bachelors just how sexy she is? Might you briefly touch her on her hip? Might you do this so that the bachelors might think for a split second "wow if even her father thinks she's hot, she must be so hot..." Or might they think "hand on hip=sexy therefore girl=sexy". Or maybe it will be purely instinctive and the bachelors will experience a boost in testosterone without realizing why.

Trump's game is all about persuading people. Trump's base adores Ivanka pretty much because she is every bachelor's ideal wife. She's gorgeous, humble, and not intimidating. It is very likely that Trump knows that briefly touching her hip on stage will get many of the men in his audience more excited about Trump.

You're a psychologist right? This type of thing is right up your alley.

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You really think his daughter needs help attracting men? Why doesn't he do this with his other daughter then, who's obviously less attractive than Ivanka? Moreover, no-one reacts to this by saying 'wow even her dad thinks she's hot, she must really be hot.' They react to it like 'Wtf is this? This guy is fucked in the head and his daughter is probably fucked in the head too. I'm going to give her a pass, thanks.'

Here's another interpretation of his behavior:

1. He's a narcissist (iow, he's in love with himself).

2. He sees his most attractive daughter as a reflection of that self, as a sort of female version or side of him.

3. He isn't perving so much as showing that he can't resist himself. So even though it's a social taboo to behave that way, he's so attracted to his own reflection that he can't help but act like he wants it. He might never act out that self-love beyond a certain point (i.e., he probably never tries to actually fuck his daughter), but he doesn't want to fuck her, Ivanka, the person, so much as he wants to fuck the bit of himself he sees in her.

I'm not on expert in this area and I'm just talking out my ass, but I'm pretty sure my theory is a lot closer to the truth than yours.

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

You really think his daughter needs help attracting men? Why doesn't he do this with his other daughter then, who's obviously less attractive than Ivanka? Moreover, no-one reacts to this by saying 'wow even her dad thinks she's hot, she must really be hot.' They react to it like 'Wtf is this? This guy is fucked in the head and his daughter is probably fucked in the head too. I'm going to give her a pass, thanks.'

Here's another interpretation of his behavior:

1. He's a narcissist (iow, he's in love with himself).

2. He sees his most attractive daughter as a reflection of that self, as a sort of female version or side of him.

3. He isn't perving so much as showing that he can't resist himself. So even though it's a social taboo to behave that way, he's so attracted to his own reflection that he can't help but act like he wants it. He might never act out that self-love beyond a certain point (i.e., he probably never tries to actually fuck his daughter), but he doesn't want to fuck her, Ivanka, the person, so much as he wants to fuck the bit of himself he sees in her.

I'm not on expert in this area and I'm just talking out my ass, but I'm pretty sure my theory is a lot closer to the truth than yours.

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I'm not exactly defending him. I find his behavior very much different than my own behavior.

Regardless, I'm going to come up with any cognitive dissonant reason I can to claim why this is a big nothing-burger. I'll do this because (1) Ivanka is hot, and (2) I don't care if the man fucks goats in his free time as long as he does what's right on policy for the people of the country (and the world).

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Trump's base adores Ivanka pretty much because she is every bachelor's ideal wife. She's gorgeous, humble, and not intimidating. It is very likely that Trump knows that briefly touching her hip on stage will get many of the men in his audience more excited about Trump.

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Seeing Ivanka gets me excited. Nothing wrong with having her and/or Melania up there looking hot from a persuasion point of view.

Seeing Trump touch her on the hips makes me, most men, and probably nearly every woman throw up a little in their mouth. Not sure how that persuades people to want to vote for him. You can make up some story about how it's all primal and it's persuasion if it makes you happy; the reality is he didn't win because of this type behavior, he won despite it.

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

Seeing Ivanka gets me excited. Nothing wrong with having her and/or Melania up there looking hot from a persuasion point of view.

Seeing Trump touch her on the hips makes me, most men, and probably nearly every woman throw up a little in their mouth. Not sure how that persuades people to want to vote for him.

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I think it's meant for the hillbillies in his base. Honest.

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You can make up some story about how it's all primal and it's persuasion if it makes you happy; the reality is he didn't win because of this type behavior, he won despite it.

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I completely, completely agree with this. I think he made some very big mistakes on this issue. One is implying Cruz's wife is ugly. Without that, I think the NeverTrump "values" conservatives drop the NeverTrump element.

I hated him for what he did to Cruz. However, I have tried to understand it too.

Hey Wuf, I have 0 bad will for you. I disagree with you to a large extent on a vast array of issues, but there is no bad will. But dont let that hinder your selection of my avatar though. We bet, I lost, now gimme your best shot!

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I think he made some very big mistakes on this issue. One is implying Cruz's wife is ugly. Without that, I think the NeverTrump "values" conservatives drop the NeverTrump element.

I hated him for what he did to Cruz. However, I have tried to understand it too.

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That's the thing, he doesn't seem to feel bound by normal mores. So he thinks he can basically say and do whatever he wants. It's a very peculiar type of personality he has. The advantages it gives him are that it catches his opponents off balance - for example, no-one at the RNC debate was prepared for his behavior because it wasn't 'debate' behavior, it was pure bullying. None of his opponents had been in an argument with someone like that since junior high. Another is that it gives him more options than a (I hesitate to say it) sane person.

The disadvantages are that if he doesn't care how he looks to others, chances are it's because he doesn't care about others period. I think this is where the biggest objection to him comes from. It's the fear that he's been selling the country snake oil by saying all the things people wanted to hear while as the same time he's not really interested in helping anyone but himself.

FYI: California prop 60 failed. It would have required the use of condoms in porn. Colorodo Prop 106 passed; permitting assisted suicide in some cases. Indiana question 1 passed; amending their constitution to include the right to hunt, fish, and harvest. (This is what google results say, Idk if theres more to amending their constitution than this) North Dakota added victim's rights to their constitution Several states increased the minimum wage And several others passed some form of marijuana use. I'm sure theres other cool things that passed too.

Avatars PM'd. Embrace the meme magic.

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

That's the thing, he doesn't seem to feel bound by normal mores. So he thinks he can basically say and do whatever he wants. It's a very peculiar type of personality he has. The advantages it gives him are that it catches his opponents off balance - for example, no-one at the RNC debate was prepared for his behavior because it wasn't 'debate' behavior, it was pure bullying. None of his opponents had been in an argument with someone like that since junior high. Another is that it gives him more options than a (I hesitate to say it) sane person.

The disadvantages are that if he doesn't care how he looks to others, chances are it's because he doesn't care about others period. I think this is where the biggest objection to him comes from. It's the fear that he's been selling the country snake oil by saying all the things people wanted to hear while as the same time he's not really interested in helping anyone but himself.

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I understand the sentiment. I held it during the primaries, and probably for a month afterwards. From here on out, how people perceive him will depend on what he does. If he truly is a douchebag, he'll keep being a douchebag. If he's not, he won't.

It's somewhat worth pointing out that as mental as Trump came across compared to lots of other right wing candidates that the GOP have in the running for things like this his views align with those held by people in the UK on average much more. The idea that he's going to be batshit and cause wars or whatever (I've heard a lot of people say they think this) is just rubbish. I imagine it'll be a very uneventful four years really.

Wuf I think you should be worried that he isn't really a man of principle & that won't change. His aim is to benefit Trump and as a result I can imagine him doing a lot of pandering to opinion. Pushing through lots of unpopular policies (which you may like) that don't have short term benefits and are slower burners just won't happen.

Also the one time someone says the world is going to end and it turns out the world ends it doesn't make them a genius, especially if no one can be arsed to go back and look at all the things they said.

Also lol at Clinton winning the popular vote.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Avatars PM'd. Embrace the meme magic.

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Gay

Lol, you got shafted

I already feel more authoritative.

Haha these avatars are hilarious.

mmmmmm

I think the biggest blow to me from this election is my hipster smugness has been almost completely drained.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

I guess regardless of where you put the blame, the lesson is the same. Don't torpedo your own electorate. Trust them to vote for the person they like and live with the decision, because the party doesn't always know best and they might be blinded by the wrong priorities.

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First I'd like to congratulate the Trump supporters on winning the election. But as I've stated before, winning an election is one thing. Governing is a whole different ballpark, and winning doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good for the country and have a great legacy, because we've had Presidents before who got elected, but still have horrible legacies. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Warren G. Harding come to mind.

And with Democrats controlling virtually nothing past the municipal level, there is literally no one to blame or scapegoat on the Democratic side if things in the nation go south, not to mention the failure to win the popular vote doesn't make the country as united behind the fairness of this election as past elections where the winner also won in the now seemingly unimportant popular vote.

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states. I'm not sure if Republicans would sign on to that idea however, considering they've now won 2 elections in the past 16 years without winning the popular vote, but it certainly would make our Presidential elections profoundly more Democratic in nature (Democratic as in how a Democracy-styled government is ideally supposed to work, not the Democratic Party).

Trump is going to get a full 4 years of total control over multiple levels of the Judicial branch, namely because Republicans made sure Obama wasn't capable of filling several judicial positions, and he'll be in position to nominate a 2nd SCOTUS nominee, probably one of the liberals since Breyer is like 78 and RBG is 83, if one of them dies/retires, which will maintain a very Conservative Supreme Court for probably more than 20 years. Roe v. Wade is on life support and about to have the plug pulled as it sits now, as well as Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt.

He'll have total control over the Legislature, and of course the Executive branch for again, at least 4 years. The House, due to very clever gerrymandering, and the Senate are extremely out of reach for Democrats going into 2018.

I find Trump voters who were opposed to Citizens United but gladly want to put Trump in charge, sadly ironic and misinformed considering it was the 4 Liberal Justices who voted against Citizen's United, and the 5 Conservatives who voted in favor of it, and with Trump's election it will essentially be the law of the land now for multiple decades (I'm not saying that Hillary's Super PAC also did not hypocritically take advantage of Citizen's United, but that is officially the way to run a major election and allow limitless campaign donations from here on out going forward so long as it remains the law of the land).

Bernie lost, well he did lose lots of Black voters which potentially sealed his fate, but the nomination process was in fact heavily slanted towards Hillary and left Bernie-supporters feeling burned and cheated going into the General, instead of it being a free and fair primary in a supposed "Democratic Party". It's in our god damn name "Democrat" which is supposed to imply "Democracy", and in it's own way probably increased the number of #Bernieorbust'ers, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, and even Trump votes in the general.

The primary rules were so incredibly fucked up in certain states, here's what needs to die.

#1 Closed Primaries.

When Bernie lost New York by huge margins, I mean it was basically a freebie handed to Hillary. It wasn't because he wasn't popular that he lost so huge, it was because only registered Democrats could vote in the primary. And you had to be registered as a Democrat, under an archaic primary rule, a full 6 months before the election which of course lots of Independents were not fully aware of when it came time to vote for Bernie, and thus banned them from voting for him and left them feeling very burned. Independents, which were the ultimate swing voters in the general, were banned from voting for him. Closed Primaries pissed a lot of people off, not just in New York, but Bernie Sanders voters nation wide, because the Democratic Party's nomination process in New York, practically gifted her the nomination in that state alone.

#2 Super Delegates.

I'd like to give a little historical perspective on Super Delegates first. Between 1968, and 1988, Democrats was one of the most losingest party's ever when it came to winning the Presidency. 6 Elections and all we elected was a mediocre one-term President. I think it was 68, when Robert Kennedy was leading and then was assassinated, the Democratic Party went behind closed doors in one of those now obsolete "smoke-filled rooms" and put a Vietnam supporting Hubert Humphrey on the ticket who hadn't won a single state in the primary to be the nominee. The 1968 Democratic Convention could have been the most chaotic, riotous, divisive, Major Political Party Convention ever.

Of course he got absolutely trounced in 68, since no one really supported him, and no one really voted to nominate him for the general either. So the Democratic Party decided to end the smoke-filled room nomination process, and just hand it entirely over to the will of the people in the primary. And boy did we. We kept electing losers and the one time we won an election, it was a one term President.

By 1980 or so, the Democratic Party decided that letting the Lefties have total control over the nomination process and keep nominating bad candidates for the general was destructive to the parties chances of ever taking back the White House. So they implemented Super-delegates after 1980, which would still be much more democratic than the smoke-filled room way of nominating Presidents, but still maintain some level of party control over who gets the nomination. Originally Superdelegates were supposed to account for 14% of the delegate count, but that number got increased to 20% by 2008.

So when Bernie won Wyoming's primary, but still managed to lose heavily when the superdelegate count was added in, obviously a lot of Bernie supporters felt incredibly burned by this even if the primary was a relatively small portion of the delegate count total.

That was basically a huge nail in the coffin of Hillary losing the General, us Bernie people were pretty livid when we saw that because it really did feel like we were cheated out of our favorite politician of all time, securing the nomination. I was all but a #Bernieorbust'er, but I ultimately decided to vote for Hillary because I thought Trump would weaken the country, even if I had spent my whole life promising myself I'd never vote for Hillary.

It is very possible we have just opened up a Pandora's Box with limitless repercussions and unknown consequences by electing Trump into the WH, and Republican dominated Judicial and Legislative branches, as I studied a lot of his proposed policies, economic, tax, budgetary, how he'll handle trade and so on and so forth.


Trump represents a total rejection of the lesson's learned from the historical record on a few issues, based on my studies. At this point I'm just a canary in the coal mine and I have absolutely no means to stop whatever happens.

I hate to sound alarmist. But as an adult living with Autism, Autistic people can get a very keen and detailed level of expertise on topics that interest them. And I have a deep passion for American History, Political Science, Criminal Justice as you all know, and Economics as well as Economic history dating back to and what factors lead up to the Great Depression, and a limited amount of knowledge on the 5 Depressions before The Great Depression and what caused them.

I don't think there's a cool or competent head at any level of of the Federal, and most State governments right now that is set to take power.

It's sadly ironic that Trump and the Republicans now have as much, if not more, political power as Republicans did in 1928. Because 1932, was one of the biggest and major political blowout elections in American history for the Democratic party because it basically ushered in 50 years of Progressive Social and Economic Policy after the huge impact on the collective memories of the American electorate between 1928 and 1932. And overall Republican's stances on government and economics, really haven't evolved if at all since 1928. And if you're a student of history, you should full well know how much this country changed between 1928 and 1932.

I know the Trump supporters are very happy right now, and they should be because their guy won.


With Trump in power and pretty much no checks, executively, legislatively or judicially on what he can do, I personally agree the Republicans should immediately kill the Filibuster because it's a very undemocratic legislative ability in an already undemocratic institution. Then the Republicans can pass fuckton's of bills with absolutely no input from Democrats, basically Republicans will have full control as to the direction of the country, with zero interference at that point.


Besides his massive spending on infrastructure which I do in fact strongly support, I go over a lot of his policies and basically we may have to relearn all the lesson's of the Great Depression, all over again. ANd that would happen once American's are facing huge and massive unemployment, soup/bread lines, and massive shanty towns outside of every major US city once residents are evicted from their homes.



We won't know for sure as it sits now so there's no sense in arguing, but 4 years from now, maybe 8, we will have a much clearer idea on how acutely Trump and the Republicans have altered the course of American history in this election going forward.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

And with Democrats controlling virtually nothing past the municipal level, there is literally no one to blame or scapegoat on the Democratic side if things in the nation go south, not to mention the failure to win the popular vote doesn't make the country as united behind the fairness of this election as past elections where the winner also won in the now seemingly unimportant popular vote.

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TBF, this is what we said in 2008, and we all know how that went. I put it at ~0% chance that Democrats "take the high road" on filibustering power.

There are of course a lot of important differences:

1) Republicans own the House, too.

2) As of now, he lost the popular vote, so he doesn't have as much of a mandate (if that means anything).

3) There isn't an economic fire to put out the second Trump takes the oath of office to keep him busy for a while and force him to spend a lot of his bargaining chips early.

4) He probably doesn't have bargaining chips to begin with. Obama ran on the promise of a bipartisan presidency, so it was important to him at least keep up appearances that he was working with the minority party.

5) I don't for one second put it past Trump to use his executive powers to the fullest extent and not give a single shit about precedent or optics or pissing off the minority party or any of that. Again, it was really important to Obama to be seen as the guy who worked with Republicans to get things done, and people like Mitch McConnell saw that as an opportunity to bully him with passivity and force Obama to renege on one campaign promise or another.

This will be less of a pick your poison situation, and more of a game of chicken. I hope to god this isn't the case, but I could see him looking at the Constitution like a business contract, where he looks for all the things his party can get away with and exploits them to the fullest degree. Rather than, you know, caring about precedent and reasonable force and all that. If anything, he ran on the promise to shake things up and do things different from how things have been run for the last two and a half centuries.

Well, I went into this post thinking I'd disagree with your point, and came out of it feeling even more uncertain of what to expect.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states.

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There's already an agreement floating around the electorates to vote with the popular vote that, once signed by 270 of them, would effectively make it the law of the land. New York just joined, bringing it up to 165. This doesn't require any amendment process because the electorate isn't bound by the Constitution to vote any one way, so once they have enough on board to swing any election, they can just vote along that line.

I highly doubt 105 more are going to sign on before December 19th just so they can swing this election or anything (not only would that politicize the process, leaving open the criticism that they knowingly swung an election based on its results, but it's also not fair to change the rules of the game once it's already been played). But just as a response to you saying Republicans won't sign onto it and all that, that's not what would need to happen.

Many people voted for Trump because he isn't an establishment politician. In the EU referendum the political establishment said "Don't do it!" and a lot of people said "FUCK YOU WE'RE GONNA DO IT!". US election rolls up, the establishment says "Don't vote for Trump because X/Y/Z" and people think "fuck you, I'll vote for him if I want to".

His supporters think that because he is not part of the political establishment he will represent them better and 'make America great again'. I'm afraid though that Donald Trump is only interested in his own interests.

The thing that really surprises me is that so many women voted for him.

In response to the primaries, I think a robust primary process is the simplest solution to the electorate feeling shafted by the two-party system. Almost nobody sees it as a core mechanism in the democratic process (somewhat rightfully so, seeing as how it's run by the parties and not by the people), and to me, that's the problem. I don't wanna go off on too much of a tangent about BernieOrBusters, but if they felt that the primary was where they got their shot at electing their non-binary choice for president, and then they got over it when he lost and moved on to making the best binary choice for president among what was left by general election, then it's essentially like a run-off election and they can stop moping about how they don't have their favorite choice immediately available to them at this exact point in time and just worry about choosing the best of what's left.

The ideal scenario for me has two main elements to it:

1) Take it out of the parties' hands. Not so much because I'm bitter about how this or that primary was run or any of that; just because you can't promote it as a legitimate part of the democratic process unless it's run by the people/state rather than by the political machines.

How you do this is another question. Do you divvy up candidates by "Conservative" and "Liberal"? Is everyone open to vote on both sides of the ticket, or are they registered as one or the other and vote on their own side? (I lean toward the latter, even if it's more democratic to assume people aren't assholes).

2) Instant Runoff Voting for primaries. Leave the general as is, let people rank candidates for the primaries, and I think that's the perfect compromise.

Of course ranking multiple candidates involves more participation from the voters, and that gets into a whole other can of worms that I'll save for another post.

The main thing that the USA (and the UK) absolutely needs to do is scrap it's current voting system and build a new one from scratch. So many problems stem from that.

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Originally Posted by Hoopy

Many people voted for Trump because he isn't an establishment politician. In the EU referendum the political establishment said "Don't do it!" and a lot of people said "FUCK YOU WE'RE GONNA DO IT!". US election rolls up, the establishment says "Don't vote for Trump because X/Y/Z" and people think "fuck you, I'll vote for him if I want to".

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Everyone (every single person) is "anti-establishment." There isn't a single person who thinks everything the government does, the media says and the academics teach is honkey dorey. But you can't shut your ears to every politician, reporter and economist/military officer/what-have-you or else you're ignoring every single person who is qualified to inform you.

The problem is in specificity. If you're not nailing down *what about* those things you disdain, which you want to remove and how you are going to solve what's left, then you're bound to throw the baby out with the bath water.

And that's what happened here. You hate CNN? Great, me too. But there was only one major publication in the entire country that endorsed Trump, and it was National Enquirer. This isn't a problem with "mainstream media"; it's a problem with every single fucking reporter on the face of the planet, at which point we've gone beyond hating the establishment and have entered The Matrix level of reality doubting.

I could go down the list with each of the aspects of "the establishment" the same way, but the list would be needlessly exhaustive.

The point is that I'm not some establishment bot by any-fucking-stretch of the imagination and I'm absolutely a skeptic. But at a certain point, it gets to be such a scattershot that it's like saying, "Fuck The Man," and going down the street and punching literally every person with a Y chromosome in the dick. Um, that's not what we meant by "The Man."

I thought BID would love his avatar more than anything.

Reference for my avatar. It's CNN's live feed shutting down (what a coincidence) the moment a pundit mentioned Wikileaks and Hillary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8cOLIOaikU

By the way, I should clarify that all these posts on how to improve the election process isn't sour grapes. I'm not like, "Oh no, Trump won, clearly we need to overhaul everything." It's just stuff I've been thinking a lot about throughout the election process, and now that there's nothing left to argue about with polls and all, this is what I've been digesting.

Anyway, I think we need to systemically move toward a process that makes the voter a participant rather than a passive consumer of political information. We are like hundreds of millions of micro-employers, and these candidates should be acting like our applicants. I think this is as simple as having a centralized .gov site where everyone running for office fills out a profile, and those profiles can be compared head-to-head. Things like this exist with ballotpedia and all that, but they come with various flaws and they're things that have to be sought out by voters who are interested enough to do so. Just have a headshot, a place to upload documents (eg: tax returns), a bio, a summary, and then a series of prompts: Main Initiatives, Immigration, Gun Control, Taxes, Economic Prioirities, and so forth.

I realize this is a stupidly simple idea that probably seems very small, but I do think encouraging voters to do personal research and giving them a centralized, unbiased place to start is crucial. This isn't just some pie-in-the-sky wet dream about having an "informed" electorate. First of all, it takes research just to know all of the elections that are going to be on your ballot and this is about changing the default venue where people get to know their candidates (rather than a wet dream about how much time they're going to spend on that or how educated they're going to become on the issues or any of that).

As of now, voters feel they have done their job if watch the debates and watch/read/follow stuff (god knows what the stuff is). That's the default turf where the election process takes place.

Everyone obviously complains about the latter for a whole wide range of legitimate reasons, but the former is totally broken too. Debates come out of the academic realm and aren't used much in other venues because they only work under certain conditions. The things they call debates aren't even properly structured (eg: no stasis, no cross-examination periods), but much more importantly, DEBATES MUST BE ENTERED IN GOOD FAITH!

Trump is not a scapegoat for this, but he is the perfect poster child for how to break debates. First of all, debates don't even have a "point," so I don't even know what entering in good faith even means. The expressed intent of them is to give both (or all) sides the opportunity to look good rather than to solve anything. But you break it by avoiding a stasis, staying on topic only when it makes your point (and again, the only "point" is to make yourself look good), interrupting and derailing the other side's arguments, dominating airtime, and just all around fucking things up.

Obviously debates should stay because they're a tradition and it gives us a good chance of seeing how people interact in various situations and all that, but to pretend like people are coming out of it more informed on anything really is foolish. It'll happen sometimes, but it won't necessarily/by-the-nature-of-the-process happen.

Finally, this is more on The People, then it is on the government, but the final piece of the puzzle is just to encourage a personal information acquisition period where people go to the .gov site, read up on their options (reading "applications), do any further reading they think they need to do AND THEN go into the "interview" process.

And I'm not just saying this for the sake of the presidential election by the way. People *absolutely HAVE to* engage themselves into the process in order to know what the fuck is going to be on their ballot in the first place, much less what each role plays in their government, much MUCH less know which person would be best to fill that role.

Summary: make candidates fill out an application, put those applications in some medium that compares each of the profiles next to each other, distribute this medium widely. I'd do it my damned self and make a profit off of it, if the entire point weren't to make this a direct conversation between applicant (politicians) and employer (voters) with no intermediating forces in between (including cost/advertising).

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Reference for my avatar.

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LMAO, that's insane.

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Originally Posted by ImSavy

Wuf I think you should be worried that he isn't really a man of principle & that won't change.

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This is one of the reasons I supported Cruz. He was ideologically against intrusive government, just like me. Trump is not. Limbaugh (Trump's golfing buddy) put it best and earliest, saying that Trump is not an ideologue, which is a strength since he uses anything that works. This is how I think his administration will function.

Let's contrast Obama to Trump here. When Obama was confronted with the bad economy, what did he do? Did he ask "how do we solve this problem?" Not quite. He instead went to his ideology that the solution to a bad economy involves fiscal stimulus and welfare, and he did a lot of that. I know this probably sounds wrong to somebody who supports Obama, but here's an example that shows he was ideological first and foremost: he left Fed seats unfilled for very, very long times (IIRC it was years). No non-ideological economist would have advised that. But Obama did it because the ideology he espouses is against the use of monetary policy to improve economic conditions.

Anyways, Trump, being a non-ideologue and being in a position where he has to deliver the goods on the economy, is likely to focus on expertise more than an ideologue would be.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

My recommendation to fix that problem, would to be to have enough states with enough electoral college votes to add up to 270, to automatically award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the popular vote, and regardless who won their state, it would gut the importance of swing states, and candidates could travel all across the country to campaign instead of just a few key states. I'm not sure if Republicans would sign on to that idea however, considering they've now won 2 elections in the past 16 years without winning the popular vote, but it certainly would make our Presidential elections profoundly more Democratic in nature (Democratic as in how a Democracy-styled government is ideally supposed to work, not the Democratic Party).

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The states have the power to allocate EV's however they want, so they could do this. I forget the name of it, but I'm pretty sure a total of 140-170 EV states have already passed amendments (or maybe just bills) to their constitutions saying that once enough states to reach 270 do this, they will give their EV's to the popular vote winner.

The other point I will make is that I don't think this would solve anything. If this was a popular vote election, Trump (and Bush) would have campaigned differently. Trump was able to edge out Clinton in PA, MI, FL and the others in part because of the massive amounts of rallies he held in them and because he adjusted his message to the people of those states. But if it was popular vote, for sure he would have spent a ton of time in California and New York and have adjusted his message for those demos.

I do not think a candidate winning the EV but not the PV shows that he was less popular than his opponent. One thing it does show is that on the areas the candidates focused on, the one who won the EV was more popular, which suggests that had the campaigns been nationwide, the effect could have held.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

LMAO, that's insane.

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If I could summarize that book of a post I wrote basically it boiled down to this.

Have enough states (and DC) adding up to 270 electoral college votes automatically dump all their votes to whoever gets the popular vote nationwide. This is not an inherently bad idea, because the winner will always have the majority of the people behind them, unlike this election. 2nd Election in 16 years that the Popular vote winner lost, and Bush was a fucking lousy President, we could have averted some major policy disasters (Like the Iraq War) if the Popular vote winner won that election.

And the Republicans had a much stronger candidate because he was democratically elected by his party (unlike in the general).

The Democratic party's nominee was not Democratically elected in the primary, which ultimately IMO killed her chances in the general. I felt the Democratic Party forced Hillary as a choice upon me because the elites at the top of the party was what THEY wanted.

Again, we need to kill Closed Primaries, and destroy the Superdelegate idea, it's horribly outdated it appears.

I have no idea what to do about regular Primaries vs Caucus's. IIRC Bernie did fare better in the Caucus's because they drive out more of the "die-hard enthusiasts" of the party (not elites).

I know damn well Bernie would have won this thing though, because Bernie had a movement behind him, Trump had a movement behind him. Hillary had no movement behind her except a small and ultimately insignificant contingent hoping to see the first female President.

I remember meet this crusty old white bitch, at a protest outside of Jeff Flakes office for refusing to replace Scalia, she was literally, the whole campaign season THE ONLY enthusiastic Hillary supporter (my theory was because she wanted to see a woman President, my mom thanks she had the qualifications to gain some kind of employment under her administration). Bernie on the other hand, I met fuck tons of enthusiastic Bernie supporters, we were very lukewarm to Hillary though. Bernie was basically a reincarnation of FDR pretty much.

We argued with her because while we may share the same party with her, we deeply did not like her choice for the nominee who now we know lost the election. And I told her, 2016, is an "Anti-Establisment Election", Establishment politicians were deeply popular going into November.

This did not matter to her, I guess she assumed, like several elitist Democrats did, that the Presidency would basically be handed to Hillary on a silver platter. And I pointed out a group of about 6 people at the protest who were the only people between the ages of 18 and 23. And I told, those people are essentially the people who will make or break the election, because their age group also ultimately lead to Obama winning, and I'll bet that all of them are Bernie supporters. She didn't care, I dunno. Just couldn't convince her to change her views.

I later went to the group of young college students at the protest (one was a super hot female btw) and I asked them who they planned to vote for in the primary, and sure enough all of them said Bernie practically in unison.

THe old white lady, she kind of insisted I add her on facebook, and I did for all of about 3 days, she'd send me all this Pro-Hillary, Anti-Bernie crap, I found it deeply offensive because I've loved Bernie ever since 2002, when he cast his vote against the Iraq War, while Hillary voted to approve it. Sure would have liked to see her face though when her beloved Hillary got her ass handed to her by Trump on election night and she probably recalled my specific words "This is an Anti-Establishment election year". Outsmarted her in that sense.

One last thought, I want to say Congrats to the Trump supporters on here, by making the fucking brilliant move of kicking Jeb Bush to the curb early into the Primary contest, getting rid of him right off the bat was very clever and brilliant.

And I'm pissed at the Democrats super fucking dumb move of ultimately picking Hillary to be the nominee, through closed primaries and super delegates. Even I knew it was an Anti-Establishment election year, but apparently the "geniuses" at the top of my party couldn't see that when they kept pulling strings in those hacked emails to ensure she would get the nomination no matter what.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

This is one of the reasons I supported Cruz. He was ideologically against intrusive government, just like me. Trump is not. Limbaugh (Trump's golfing buddy) put it best and earliest, saying that Trump is not an ideologue, which is a strength since he uses anything that works. This is how I think his administration will function.

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This is my greatest hope. That now that he's won the White House and had his ego petted, he really won't care all that much what gets done while he's in office. He'll surround himself with experts, pretty much follow their recommendations, be a hard-ass on a few core campaign promises, and mostly just play it by ear. I mean, he ran on a campaign of, "I'm not going to be a puppeteer" and "I know more than all these pussies" so I'm not sure how this jives with all that, but that's my hope.

Even in this best case scenario, it won't be very good because I don't trust his judgement, so I don't expect the appointments to be good and when (eg) the CIA brainstorms a really bad idea, I don't put it past him to say, "Yeah, fuck those towel heads, let's do it!" I'm also scared shitless at the idea of him being the face of our country and lead diplomat. And while in this world I don't think we create a Muslim database or anything, I still think even the few campaign promises he'll go hard after are utter shit.

But at least in this world, he's not just going rogue and dropping nukes and manipulating congress to add all sorts of earmarks for his cronies and all that Comic Book villain level shit.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

It's sadly ironic that Trump and the Republicans now have as much, if not more, political power as Republicans did in 1928. Because 1932, was one of the biggest and major political blowout elections in American history for the Democratic party because it basically ushered in 50 years of Progressive Social and Economic Policy after the huge impact on the collective memories of the American electorate between 1928 and 1932. And overall Republican's stances on government and economics, really haven't evolved if at all since 1928. And if you're a student of history, you should full well know how much this country changed between 1928 and 1932.

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Friedman and Schwartz demonstrated, and Bernanke agreed, that the Fed more or less caused the Great Depression. The Roaring 20s was not the problem. It was a very good thing. The problem was the central bank had a flawed understanding of economics and believed that it was their job to identify and deflate bubbles. Econ money textbooks teach that this is not possible. Regardless, the Fed didn't like how great things were in the economy, so they crunched it, causing expectations of disaster, resulting in actual disaster.

Another element regards the Fed financial regulation duties. It was asleep on the job and didn't do anything when signs of bank failures began. Other banks did nothing as well because of the moral hazard created by the Fed having a regulatory monopoly on the financial system.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

But at least in this world, he's not just going rogue and dropping nukes and manipulating congress to add all sorts of earmarks for his cronies and all that Comic Book villain level shit.

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Yea, hopefully he won't be like Civilization VI's Gandhi.

Most of his success historically speaking will probably be measured by which campaign promises he DIDN'T do. A lot of his campaign promises were fucking idiotic on several levels. He wants to "unite the country" right now, after he basically told Muslim's you're going to be under constant surveillance, women will be punished for what reproductive health choices they make if Trump/Pence don't approve of it, Blacks live in ghetto shitholes and have made no progress since they got out of slavery and the police are going to wantonly stop and frisk you because you "might" be a criminal, and Mexican's and Hispanics in general are going to be rounded up and sent south of the border by the millions, I assume the legal ones will also be checked to make sure they're not illegal so they're gonna have to deal with Trump's jackbooted thugs just due to their ethnicity.

Good luck uniting women and those minority groups behind that, President Donald J. Trump.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surviva316

1) Take it out of the parties' hands. Not so much because I'm bitter about how this or that primary was run or any of that; just because you can't promote it as a legitimate part of the democratic process unless it's run by the people/state rather than by the political machines.

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I would like the parties to stay private. I interpret the Founders' language and intentions as saying that "the people" is made up of private individuals. It is common today to think of "the people" as the public and under the will of the government. I think turning the parties public would undermine citizens' ability to influence our government.


There was something else I wanted to respond to, but I lost where it was said. I think it was you who said it though, so I'll respond here. It was on the idea that it would have been more robust if Bernie people had bitten the bullet and voted Hillary. I agree in premise that the primaries are for the fight and that all supporters of the losers should support the nominee, but I think that the Bernie situation was different because of the leaks showing Clinton and the DNC rigged it against him. That turned a lot of Democrats into Independents or Republicans, and I think their rationale was justified.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

This is my greatest hope. That now that he's won the White House and had his ego petted, he really won't care all that much what gets done while he's in office. He'll surround himself with experts, pretty much follow their recommendations

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Yeah, that sounds like him.

Seriously, I don't know what he'll do, but I'm putting that scenario near the bottom of the list in terms of likelihood. He's never listened to anyone before; to think he's suddenly going to learn humility is just wishful thinking imo.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

This is one of the reasons I supported Cruz. He was ideologically against intrusive government, just like me. Trump is not. Limbaugh (Trump's golfing buddy) put it best and earliest, saying that Trump is not an ideologue, which is a strength since he uses anything that works. This is how I think his administration will function.

Let's contrast Obama to Trump here. When Obama was confronted with the bad economy, what did he do? Did he ask "how do we solve this problem?" Not quite. He instead went to his ideology that the solution to a bad economy involves fiscal stimulus and welfare, and he did a lot of that. I know this probably sounds wrong to somebody who supports Obama, but here's an example that shows he was ideological first and foremost: he left Fed seats unfilled for very, very long times (IIRC it was years). No non-ideological economist would have advised that. But Obama did it because the ideology he espouses is against the use of monetary policy to improve economic conditions.

Anyways, Trump, being a non-ideologue and being in a position where he has to deliver the goods on the economy, is likely to focus on expertise more than an ideologue would be.

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Some of the time it will no doubt involve taking unprincipled "correct" solutions to problems where otherwise ideology would get in the way but not when that goes strongly against public opinion. He isn't bothered about how the GOP does in the next election he cares about coming off well. Lots of passing the buck, blaming other people type scenarios are going to happen.

My fave Bernie meme from The_Donald:

http://i.imgur.com/lV5HfHK.jpg

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Originally Posted by ImSavy

Some of the time it will no doubt involve taking unprincipled "correct" solutions to problems where otherwise ideology would get in the way but not when that goes strongly against public opinion. He isn't bothered about how the GOP does in the next election he cares about coming off well. Lots of passing the buck, blaming other people type scenarios are going to happen.

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^This. I don't think I've ever truly seen Trump take responsibility for a fuck up he made or had an ounce of self reflection. He literally is never wrong in his mind. Perhaps it was a strength for winning the general, but it's still a major character flaw.

Trump is the polar opposite of Truman's "The Buck Stops Here"

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Originally Posted by surviva316

Even in this best case scenario, it won't be very good because I don't trust his judgement, so I don't expect the appointments to be good and when (eg) the CIA brainstorms a really bad idea, I don't put it past him to say, "Yeah, fuck those towel heads, let's do it!" I'm also scared shitless at the idea of him being the face of our country and lead diplomat. And while in this world I don't think we create a Muslim database or anything, I still think even the few campaign promises he'll go hard after are utter shit.

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After his win was announced, two chief antagonists within the "ally" realm for the US came out with very positive statements moving forward: Putin and Duterte. I'm of the opinion that Trump will deal with (already has) foreign leaders way better than Clinton and Obama have.

I mean, to me it looks like the smart thing for Trump to have done regarding Putin during the campaign if he indeed expected to be President was to say nice things about Putin. And that's what he did.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

After his win was announced, two chief antagonists within the "ally" realm for the US came out with very positive statements moving forward: Putin and Duterte. I'm of the opinion that Trump will deal with (already has) foreign leaders way better than Clinton and Obama have.

I mean, to me it looks like the smart thing for Trump to have done regarding Putin during the campaign if he indeed expected to be President was to say nice things about Putin. And that's what he did.

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He might make inroads with those guys (btw those guys have very authoritarian dictatorship styles of governance, basically due process does not exist in the Philippines right now) but our Western European allies hate him. The French President doesn't seem to like him, and pretty sure the entire British Parliament doesn't either. What's next, Allies with North Korea? Who knows.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

^This. I don't think I've ever truly seen Trump take responsibility for a fuck up he made or had an ounce of self reflection. He literally is never wrong in his mind. Perhaps it was a strength for winning the general, but it's still a major character flaw.

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One of my close friends didn't vote for him for this reason.

If I'm trying to explain why Trump does this, it would be because never admitting to mistakes is very persuasive, just not to everybody. He has expressed humility and admitted to mistakes a few times in the campaign, but they are hard to spot.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

The Democratic party's nominee was not Democratically elected in the primary, which ultimately IMO killed her chances in the general.

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This is an extremely unfair statement to make and is revisionist history. Bernie Sanders ran headsup against Hillary Clinton and lost by 12 points. It was an impressive run for a self-proclaimed socialist running on no corporate funding with essentially zero endorsements, but if you don't grade on a curve, he lost very badly.

You can dredge up all the primary shenanigans (though primaries are chockful of a shenanigans, and the anti-Hillary reporting of them could just be social media bias) and media bias and DNC bias and make baseless guesses about momentum, and I agree he didn't get a totally fair shake and I'd love for the process to be overhauled, but he didn't even come kind of close to winning the candidacy and I don't think any intellectually honest person should feel comfortable saying that Clinton didn't win a democratic race against him.

Hey, I wish he had gotten a fair shake, not just because it would have nominally increased his chances of winning the candidacy, but also so that Clinton could have won the BernieButthurters by a margin larger than 55-12 (which could have cost her close to a million potential votes in MI and WI).

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

Even I knew it was an Anti-Establishment election year, but apparently the "geniuses" at the top of my party couldn't see that when they kept pulling strings in those hacked emails to ensure she would get the nomination no matter what.

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Don't break your arm patting your back just yet.

First of all, Trump's socknocker of a victory is more of grading Trump on a curve. He didn't destroy Hillary; it's just shocking that he even showed up on the electoral map outside of the southeast, much less snuck out a win. Hillary won the popular vote, and if you run this 10 times, I suspect she wins the EV at least 4 of those times. There were 5 states that were decided by <1.5%; she needed 48 electoral votes from the 76 up for grab between MI, WI, PA, FL and NH (and this doesn't count the ME and NE 2nd districts, which I suspect were close), and she only got 4. This is like running AKo into 77 and losing. Hell, Comey's absolution could've come out a couple days earlier, and that might have been enough to force a few tens of thousands of votes back to the center.

Second of all, you can cite whatever polls you want, but we have no idea what would have happened had Trump had a full general election cycle to tear down Bernie. Say what you will about the DNC, but Hillary went at him with absolute kid gloves. If Trump had months to dismantle a self-proclaimed socialist, you better believe there'd be a shitload of people seeing him as Stalin himself.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

One of my close friends didn't vote for him for this reason.

If I'm trying to explain why Trump does this, it would be because never admitting to mistakes is very persuasive, just not to everybody. He has expressed humility and admitted to mistakes a few times in the campaign, but they are hard to spot.

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Chairman Mao got really pissed off at one of the top generals (I forget what he did to him, kill him, imprison him, at minimum removed him from power, I forget) that commanded the Chinese forces during the Korean War, when he dared to criticize Chairman Mao for the mass famine that killed like 30+ million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward. I could see Trump doing this.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

but our Western European allies hate him. The French President doesn't seem to like him, and pretty sure the entire British Parliament doesn't either

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They have no backbone. They'll fall in line.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I would like the parties to stay private. I interpret the Founders' language and intentions as saying that "the people" is made up of private individuals. It is common today to think of "the people" as the public and under the will of the government. I think turning the parties public would undermine citizens' ability to influence our government.

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I want to keep the parties. I mean they could make the primaries an official part of the national election process, which would involve making them run by the people, rather than by the RNC and DNC.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

They have no backbone. They'll fall in line.

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Actually, maybe the people will kick the weak leaders out. Go Le Pen!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surviva316

Second of all, you can cite whatever polls you want, but we have no idea what would have happened had Trump had a full general election cycle to tear down Bernie. Say what you will about the DNC, but Hillary went at him with absolute kid gloves. If Trump had months to dismantle a self-proclaimed socialist, you better believe there'd be a shitload of people seeing him as Stalin himself.

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Yea, I actually do kind of agree with you on every point you made. Fairer Democratic Primaries would have done a lot for Hillary to reduce the butthurt Bernie fans and strengthen her chances. That wikileaks email leak, I was deeply offended by as a Bernie fan when it showed the collusion of the Democratic Party to treat him like a candidate who has no chances of winning the nomination, just let him put on his little show at the primary debates, nod and smile back at him, but in their heads they'll be god damned if he gets the nomination.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surviva316

Even in this best case scenario, it won't be very good because I don't trust his judgement, so I don't expect the appointments to be good and when (eg) the CIA brainstorms a really bad idea, I don't put it past him to say, "Yeah, fuck those towel heads, let's do it!" I'm also scared shitless at the idea of him being the face of our country and lead diplomat. And while in this world I don't think we create a Muslim database or anything, I still think even the few campaign promises he'll go hard after are utter shit.

But at least in this world, he's not just going rogue and dropping nukes and manipulating congress to add all sorts of earmarks for his cronies and all that Comic Book villain level shit.

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This is sort of my idea of what it will be like. I would add though that when the upside to a new leader is that despite all the stupid shit he might do, he will probably stop short of using nukes, that's not exactly a sign for rejoicing.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

Chairman Mao got really pissed off at one of the top generals (I forget what he did to him, kill him, imprison him, at minimum removed him from power, I forget) that commanded the Chinese forces during the Korean War, when he dared to criticize Chairman Mao for the mass famine that killed like 30+ million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward. I could see Trump doing this.

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The message worked. A man who was hugely successful for many decades, whom nobody ever described in these terms, was turned into a monster. Robert Cialdini and the media sold bridges out in Hoax County like hotcakes. But now the bridges are crumbling.

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

This is sort of my idea of what it will be like. I would add though that when the upside to a new leader is that despite all the stupid shit he might do, he will probably stop short of using nukes, that's not exactly a sign for rejoicing.

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Granted now, Trump wants stronger relations with Russia, back in 1962 USSR was seen as our mortal enemies and a major threat to us. But if he had been President during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, how do you think that would have turned out?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

The message worked. A man who was hugely successful for many decades, whom nobody ever described in these terms, was turned into a monster. Robert Cialdini and the media sold bridges out in Hoax County like hotcakes. But now the bridges are crumbling.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini

Had to look that one up, I got some reading to do now.

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Originally Posted by JKDS

I already feel more authoritative.

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Soon you'll glare into the depths of Hell with no fear

http://i.imgur.com/RCAvQyH.jpg

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Originally Posted by surviva316

First of all, Trump's socknocker of a victory is more of grading Trump on a curve. He didn't destroy Hillary; it's just shocking that he even showed up on the electoral map outside of the southeast, much less snuck out a win. Hillary won the popular vote, and if you run this 10 times, I suspect she wins the EV at least 4 of those times. There were 5 states that were decided by <1.5%; she needed 48 electoral votes from the 76 up for grab between MI, WI, PA, FL and NH (and this doesn't count the ME and NE 2nd districts, which I suspect were close), and she only got 4. This is like running AKo into 77 and losing. Hell, Comey's absolution could've come out a couple days earlier, and that might have been enough to force a few tens of thousands of votes back to the center.

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Poker analogy not really apt here.

It's tempting to say after the fact that some of those close states could have gone her way but didn't, but it's also incorrect. They didn't go her way and that's not because of random variance, it's cause she didn't convince enough people to go and vote for her.

I agree the Comey thing was ill-timed though (or perfectly timed from the perspective of Trump). It exasperated me to have to hear about the email shit again, and I don't even live there. I can imagine the effect it would have had on Joe Undecided.

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985

One last thought, I want to say Congrats to the Trump supporters on here, by making the fucking brilliant move of kicking Jeb Bush to the curb early into the Primary contest, getting rid of him right off the bat was very clever and brilliant.

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WTF are you smoking?! That was all part of Jeb's master plan! Nobody saw it coming. The madman. He did it. He fucking did it.

http://i.imgur.com/aU8EPFx.jpg

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Originally Posted by rong

Oh my fucking God. You guys are even fucking bigger idiots than we are. This would be hilarious if it wasn't utterly terrifying.

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http://i.imgur.com/YfdFIrQ.jpg












































































https://worldsupplement.files.wordpr...rage-happy.jpg

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

I agree the Comey thing was ill-timed though (or perfectly timed from the perspective of Trump). It exasperated me to have to hear about the email shit again, and I don't even live there. I can imagine the effect it would have had on Joe Undecided.

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Bill Maher said he was going to personally kill Anthony Weiner over that email shit coming back up in the news again, 11 days before the election no less, if Hillary lost. I don't think he'll do it, but he put into words what I was thinking.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985
Chairman Mao got really pissed off at one of the top generals (I forget what he did to him, kill him, imprison him, at minimum removed him from power, I forget) that commanded the Chinese forces during the Korean War, when he dared to criticize Chairman Mao for the mass famine that killed like 30+ million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward. I could see Trump doing this.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

The message worked. A man who was hugely successful for many decades, whom nobody ever described in these terms, was turned into a monster. Robert Cialdini and the media sold bridges out in Hoax County like hotcakes. But now the bridges are crumbling.

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Either I'm missing something, or this response is a complete non-sequitur.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

I think the biggest blow to me from this election is my hipster smugness has been almost completely drained.

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Now you just have to replace it with American smugness

http://i.imgur.com/RQoJupu.jpg

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

Either I'm missing something, or this response is a complete non-sequitur.

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He said "I could see Trump doing this."

I think the reason so many people have this opinion is what I earlier laid out in the persuasion tactics of his opponents.

Nah, that's not the best of Trump on twitter. THIS is some Abraham Lincoln type of shit here:

Attachment 912