Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

The twisted irony is, I believe the trickle down economics solution to the 2008 recession, a GOP policy followed by Obama, is the root cause of this. You can't provide a recovery to exclusively 5% of the country and expect those left out to remain happy. You also cannot suggest to them that you can make it all okay for them with safety nets that cannot be afforded.

Sadly, what's missed in all of this is, No One Can Bring Back the Jobs. We are beyond silly cures like protectionism. And immigration is not the problem. Those who believe they've just sent the ultimate hand grenade to Washington will soon enough learn there's nothing but a facade left to detonate. Trump blowing up the Establishment does not a jobs recovery make.

I'm seeing a glass half full because I think he'll be good for infrastructure and he'll attempt to cut deals with Democrats (which he was until two years ago). I'm also seeing what might be the mother of all Pyrrhic victories by the "left behind" classes of the country.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I didn't mean you literally. I was speaking more broadly than that. Apologies on any lack of clarity on that. You are one of the most open minded people about this stuff here. And among those I often disagree with, the voice I most respect on issues. I've changed numerous opinions in the past based on insight you've offered. (And that's no easy feat.)

My vote for Johnson just as likely harmed Trump as it might've Hillary. Trump voters gave me shit for it last night. But it's only a lost vote for either candidate to people who argue I had an obligation to vote for one candidate and against another. No one has that obligation, and it's the height of arrogance to suggest otherwise.

Trump fans have asked me how I felt not being part of the wave. No one seems to grasp, people like SEC and I had no choice but Option C.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Keep telling yourself that. All 140,000 dumbass Gary Johnson voters in PA can tell themselves that bullshit before bed every night for the next 40 years.

"It wasn't just me. There are lots of fucking stooges just like me here in PA. Ah. I feel much better now."

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You're looking at this wrong. Now the country has opened its eyes to the magic of libertarian principles!

What a fucking joke.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Right, because you're NEVER part of the problem. You're just a special, principled snowflake.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yeah, right now is a great time to pretend we're just making that shit up.

ETA: To expand on that, this is exactly what happened last night. We had a massive electoral exclamation of "I'm not the problem, it's them." It's you in a nutshell.

Clearly you do not.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You are the dumbest person with any brains I have ever met. You just say dumb shit all the time.

If Trump had any fucking policy positions other than destroy immigrants, frisk black people, build wall, cut taxes at the top, cancel trade, charge our allies for protection that you could point to, maybe you would have a point. He doesn't, so you don't. Like your arguments, he is completely fucking devoid of any ideas. You can't say "Get off your high horse when it comes to your ideas because the unthinking, who I disdain more than anybody (and who have voted for someone who has literally no ideas and no plan for anything), don't like them." The fact that you can't see the disconnect in your own post would be shocking, but I've read a lot of your posts. And they're all like this.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

The "Bernie woulda won"s are just a little too much this morning. I don't have the energy and I'm sleep deprived.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

As much as the GOP, clearly.

What planet are you on? We just found out that way more people come out to vote for racism and misogyny than against it. Nothing about that is the same as before.

Re: Apologies to Dr. Suess
 

You're starting to piss me off.

I know tons of fucking Americans. To suggest that I go to areas of this country that support Trump where I am not fucking welcome to get to know those assholes because, as you have implied above, they are real Americans is disgusting.

This narrative that only the left feels superior to those on the right is just complete trash. The right feels just as superior, if not more. They think they have the approval of God. They think they're the only ones who are Patriotic. They think they're the only ones who actually work. They think rural America is the real America.

I don't know what the fact that you buy this shit says about you. But it ain't good.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This would be a powerful critique is any of it was true. But you know, facts, man.

That even you believe it says a ton about our problem.

Dear America:
 

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Bernie would not have won. Joe Biden would have had a puncher's chance.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

A crap load of those people weren't voting for racism and misogyny. They were voting against Hillary. Check out the polling data for the race among the two most unpopular candidates ever. A majority of people just came down on the other side of the lesser of two evils analysis.

Sebby and I, OTOH, chose not to vote for evil in any form.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

No argument there. I still don't know where I will end up, but I am clearly no Trumpist Republican.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I am not putting any stock on ANY polling data coming out of this race.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

My point last night was that people with libertarian ideals who chose to vote for Johnson and thereby elected Trump have done their conscience and their ideals a disservice. Property rights depend on the rule of law, and Trump is a far greater threat to the rule of law than Hillary Clinton ever would have been.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It's not a twisted irony, it's having a GOP Congress. Obama didn't "follow" GOP policy, he lacked the votes to legislate. McConnell and the GOP figured that people would hold this against Obama instead of the GOP, and you have shown why that was both good politics and bad for those of us who aren't professional Republicans. But you said yesterday that there's really no difference between having a Democrat and a Republican in the White House, so we can all take solace in that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Sigh.

Re: Apologies to Dr. Suess
 

If this is the part of the story where Trump's heart grows two sizes, we have that going for us. Or is it his hands?

The resentment on the part of white people like you is a cultural fact, but it still baffles me. You're not poor, you're lead a pretty nice life, Trump just won the election, and you're still identifying with the Grinch.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Trump would have had a harder time running against someone who wasn't from the Washington establishment.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm sure that's what they told themselves, but it didn't bother them much.

If you poll people about what they think, I'll bet you don't find many racists and sexists. Problem solved!

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Exactly.

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/537...377/emails.png

That's fucking nuts.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

But the exit polling shows that people who hated both candidates broke for Trump. They disliked her more. [ETA: keep this in mind as you malign the PA Gary Johnson voters. ]And a lot of those people were women, and I think you'd have a hard case to show that those women hate all women.

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/ex...hated-clinton/


•Americans who viewed both Trump and Clinton unfavorably (18% of the population) broke at a rate of 49% to 29% for Trump.
•Of the 17% of the population who believed the next President should be more liberal than Obama, 23% went to Trump, implying some leftover anger from former Bernie Sanders voters.
•25% of voters stated that they voted for their candidate because they disliked his/her opponents. Of that group, Trump won 51%. In other words, he was viewed as the “lesser of the two evils.” Trump also narrowly won (49% to 48%) with voters who stated that they had “some reservations” with their chosen candidate. Meanwhile, Clinton handily won (53% to 42%) with those who “strongly favored” their candidate.
•Of those polled, 29% answered that neither candidate is honest. Trump won that portion of the electorate by a margin of 45% to 40%.
•When asked which candidate is qualified to be President, 14% answered “neither.” Trump won among this group by a split of 69% to 15%.
•In response to the question of which candidate has the better temperament, 14% answered that “neither does.” Trump won these voters 71% to 12%.


I don't think these people are all racist and hate women.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news...us-presidency/

More telling is the gender breakdown among white voters: Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent. This was close to Romney’s margin in 2012.

Some 89 percent of self-described Republicans voted for Trump; 91 percent of white Republicans did. In contrast, only 84 percent of white Democrats voted for Clinton. She did win 86 percent of white Democratic women, but only 81 percent of white, Democratic men voted for her.

Surprisingly, given all of the attention to Trump’s attitudes and behavior toward women, he did virtually as well among white, Republican women (91 percent support) as he did among white, Republican men (92 percent). Clinton was more competitive among white independent women than men, losing to Trump by a 49 to 41 percent margin among independent women and by 57 to 31 percent among independent men.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Clearly the media is biased against Hillary, especially in the general election.

Said no one ever.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

OK. If you're trying to get me to defend the straw man that every Trump voter is a racist who hates woman, I'm going to have to pass on that one.

But Trump says a lot of bigoted stuff, bigly. Anyone who voted for him decided that wasn't so much of a problem for them as, say, Hillary's lack of authenticity. And for a lot of them, it had to have been part of the appeal. As a human being, I think that's pretty sad.

Eight months ago, I thought Trump would win the GOP nomination and then split the party. You are living proof of the dynamic I thought I'd see, that many Republicans would be disgusted by him and would not vote for him. I was wrong -- there were far too few of you, and far too many Republicans who could accommodate themselves to voting for him.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Ah, yeah, except me.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It's more complicated than talking about "bias." Do you think most reporters voted for Hillary? Sure. But the media gave Trump massive free coverage. And it devoted countless hours to a bullshit email story. There was never any chance that a prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton, and the reporters all knew it, but the Clinton rules presume her to have done something wrong even when the actual facts show otherwise. I suspect that many Americans think there was something criminal just in her having set up her own server, which is categorically false. (Jason Chaffetz has House business cards with a gmail address on them. The Bush White House ran plenty of email traffic through a RNC server.) A media that was trying to help Clinton win never would have acted that way.

Donald Trump is a media personality, a reality TV star. Hillary Clinton has had a hate-hate relationship with the media for going on forty years. When Democrats think about what kind of candidate will do well, they ought to think a little less about policy chops and a little more about media savvy. You can always hire a policy wonk.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Which is another way of saying this was a "whitelash" at Democratic identity politics that ignored/excluded/offended blue collar middle class whites in supposedly solid Democratic states for decades all wrapped up in a life-long, grasping, super-slippery, Washington political insider. The Dems can also congratulate themselves.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

link

Hillary ran a race that was less about her plans and more about fear of Trump, and voila.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Upon reflection, having previously read the book, I should have realized that it was a Not Great idea. I mean, the whole premise of TTSS is that there's a high-level mole working for the Russians against his country to subvert freedom and democracy and all. I blame the second Manhattan for my mistake.

It's a very good movie, though. Gary Oldman was amazing as George Smiley.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

So much of the hatred of Hillary Clinton has sexist roots, going back to her time in Arkansas and as First Lady. So saying women wouldn't have hated another woman candidate is unverifiable. Hillary had baggage. I don't dispute that (despite my strong admiration of her). I just no longer have faith that our country will in fact be willing to elect ANY qualified female candidate to be President. Do I think sexism was in play when people walked in a voted yesterday (including old 1990s era sexism along with our more modern, still thriving sexism)? HELL YES, I do.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I've voted 10 times so far. 5 D 5 R. But in fact 7 times I voted against the other guy (once against Palin, so "guy" here is gender neutral). I always think of swing voters as deciding most elections, and I always think we mostly are voting against one of two candidates.

I think Hillary's gender was a positive for me, and I must say I got a little bit tired of people telling the world if you don't see how perfect Hillary is, you are simply sexist. That said, I cannot fathom how anyone could pick Trump as the lesser of two evils. Sexism had to play some role if you get to that decision? But who knows, I cannot imagine getting to that decision.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

They were just scared to nut up and make a decision.

Re: Not Bob's new politics thread
 

Last night, as a WSJ reporter walked out of Trump Tower through the crowds gathered, she had two different men approach her, get her face, and tell her she better watch out, they were going to grab her pussy.

Is that what you call a cultural slight?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Same. Was it 1. "Anyone But Clinton" or was it 2. misogyny? Many trumpers say 1 but next rodeo I aint taken that chance if I am the Dems.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

2, sort of. I've voted 5 D and 3 R in my life. Voted against Trump, Palin, and Kerry.

Sexism has a part, but I do think there is more at play here. Those Rust Belt numbers are sending the "we've been left behind" message. The other message is "we are tired of you calling us all stupid and telling us what is good for us".

I'm not really sympathetic to either message. If you've been left behind, it's your own damn fault for expecting to work in the same factory/mine as your father and live in the same neighborhood as your parents did. If the jobs left town, why didn't you leave, too? What does it say about your skill level that your job can be so easily moved out of the country?

And as TM noted, the second message is just hypocritical.

I'm disappointed and adrift today because of the outcome. The last time I felt this way? The OJ verdict.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Are you serious? Democrats ignored/excluded/offended blue collar middle class whites more than Republicans? Free trade isn't an idea espoused by Democrats. Union busting isn't a Democratic value. Cutting taxes for the rich while pretending it will create jobs and benefit working class people isn't a Democratic principle. Fighting investment in job-creating and desperately needed infrastructure projects was not a part of the Democrat approach. Permitting companies to take jobs overseas while protecting that income from taxation is something all politicians permitted.

If you're talking about pretend issues like reverse racism and forced gay cake-selling, then yeah. They were completely ignored and excluded. But if all it takes is the siren song of a race-baiting bullshit artist who has spent his life shitting on the very people who voted for him in overwhelming numbers, the conclusion you drew above just doesn't make any sense.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm sorry, why?

They don't think those things to themselves, but they are afraid that things are changing - in a way that helps women and people of color and Muslims - and they want that stopped. That's still racist and misogynistic.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You know that swing voters largely don't exist, right? And the elections are primarily won or lost by changes in the composition of the electorate (ie, which voters show up)?

But hey, that means you get to feel as special as SEC! You're both rarities.