The RCP link shows polls from before anyone had won their primaries. Sanders lead Trump the whole time. Here is the Tump v Clinton matchup for the same time period. She also beat Trump but it was not as close. And that was before anyone went full-bore on anyone.
No, I’m saying that RCP has a shitload of partisan commentary. I wasn’t even gonna click through to see what it said.
If you can’t be bothered to make yourself clear, I’m not gonna click through to links on a fishing expedition. ETA: I stopped playing the “here’s a link, now click through and see if you can find what you think I meant to cite in support of my argument, then argue against it, then find out that I really meant something else at the link, so you’ve got to start over, haha” game many years ago. Fuck that shit.
But now I see your reference is to…a bunch of polls from May 2016!
Wow, I’m totally convinced.
And it’s a shame the Dems didn’t nominate Michael Dukakis in 1988, because he would have crushed Bush the Elder. Why, here’s a late July 1988 poll showing Dukakis **crushing **Bush, 55-38.
Oh wait, they did. I bet Dukakis’ inauguration was something special, but for some reason I have no recollection of it.
[Was debating whether I should start my own thread, so I’m glad to have this. I’ll keep this as concise as I possibly can.]
All right, cards on the table. I gladly voted for Ralph Nader in '00 and would do it again in a minute; to this day he’s the only Presidential candidate who’s truly inspired me. I have not found a more disappointing institution in my life than the Democratic party. Did anyone pay attention when Barack Obama was swept into the White House on the heels of white-hot rage over Republican excesses and commercial banks pulling off a multi-billion dollar scam that would’ve made P.T. Barnum blush, and throughout his entire goddam presidency it was nothing but limp-wristed “bipartisanship” crap, constantly extending his hand to a party that considered him a half step above a gorilla, getting it mangled, and theln slapping on another band-aid and extending it again? Do you remember one single thing the Democrats did…ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL…with their supermajority? I mean, never mind that a Democratic takeover of Congress, if it happens, will be up against a Republican President who apparently can do absolutely anything and everything he goddam wants with zero repercussions…sheesh, no wonder Kanye West saw a kindred spirit in him (however briefly)…and a Supreme Court so packed with bass-ackwards dinosaurs you’d think it was the Oscars. If there’s one shred evidence that the Democrats ever intended to fight any of this, I’ve yet to see it. At most we get half-baked measures like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Affordable Care Act, which, of course, get demonized by the opposition every bit as much as the real thing would and frequently end up either hopelessly watered down or killed entirely.
There has been far more than enough evidence, going back to at least 1996, that on the national level the two parties really are the same on virtually any important issue. The economy, gun control, war, free trade, health care, taxes, it’s two sides of the same double-headed coin.
And that is why I’m voting straight Democratic ticket. Because I want that to actually matter again.
True, Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same on numerous vital issues. But only one party not only accepts but celebrates both racism and sexism (and you can’t have one without the other). Only one cheers when a protester gets murdered in a hit-and-run accident. Only one pushes homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, heck, hatred of anything other than white and cishet. Only once has built an entire goddam platform about irritating its perceived enemies. Only one all but worships stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, obnoxiousness, rudeness, mindless anger, mindless outrage, and all around pigheadedness. Only one has no problem with sexual harrassment, sexual assault, and outright rape. Only one has GODDAM CONFEDERATES AND NAZIS in its ranks. (Seriously, how fricking crazy is it that evils that were crushed out of existence ages ago are still are allowed to make any noise in 2018? Does China ever have to deal with Neo-Mongols?)
In my lifetime, I’ve seen gay marriage legalized, marijuana decriminalized to an extent, the Catholic Church and its protection of pedophiles thoroughly discredited, and a black man get elected President. Not huge steps, but that’s exactly how social progress is made, brick by brick, step by step, steady, inexorable, and constant. Time moves forward, never back. I really thought that there would eventually come a time when America would finally live up to its potential, to be a pretty good place to live in for all people. Now, week after week, it’s mass shootings and bombings and rape and sexual harassment and police brutality and Nazis and civil rights being eroded and respeted public figures spewing the most vile garbage on national television and crackpot conspiracy theories and pretty much anything about video games, and it all came to the forefront when a slimy waste of oxygen with zero political experience was allowed to gain the highest seat in the land because he was a slimy waste of oxygen.
So I’m going Democratic all the way, and I’m not budging until this Wonderland-from-hell ends, until we as a nation stop pretending that black is white and the purpose of life is to be aggravating to others. I assure you that as soon as Charybdis gets sent back to the black abyss from whence it came, I’ll go right back go griping about how Scylla never eats any of the already wounded sailors.
DKW, very glad you are voting Democratic, but FYI the big banks paid back all the TARP money plus interest. Unlike the auto industry, this was not really a “bailout” as taxpayers came out ahead.
I stumbled across this and thought Dopers might appreciate it: Disney heiress Abigail Disney is here to tell you exactly what the 1% did with Trump’s Tax Cuts (4:28 long eh).
Same here. Plus the horse the OP rode in on. 
I voted straight OP.
If we don’t want to argue, we are in the Pit, so we can still call each other poopheads even if we all agree.
Nice post. Unfortunately, the shattering of democratic norms is not limited to Trump. We really have our work cut out for us, in fundamental ways. Election 2018: the campaign showed the true divide in American politics - Vox
[INDENT]In North Dakota, home to a tight Senate race, a new law requiring that all voters have a residential address has made it harder for thousands of American Indian voters (typically a Democratic constituency) to vote. The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature passed a law that led to the closure of 20 percent of early voting locations, a move that could depress black turnout in crucial House races.
But the Georgia governor’s race is probably the most egregious example of this kind of behavior.
Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate, is currently Georgia’s secretary of state, a job that includes supervising the conduct of elections. Kemp has used this position to set up an unfair playing field, launching spurious investigations into Democratic “hacking” of the election and placing a disproportionate number of black voters’ registrations on hold. Rick Hasen, an expert on electoral law at the University of California Irvine, called Kemp’s conduct “the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era.”
This can’t be understood at the purely local level, as something happening in specific states without national sanction. For years now, Republicans have been using tools like voter ID laws and gerrymandering to rig the electoral system in their favor. No leading Republican, from Trump on down, has condemned the attempts by candidates like Kemp to push this even further — and that sends a clear message as to its permissibility.
“Kemp is doing this, but the state (and national) Republican parties are silent, as are his state’s leading public authorities,” Robert Mickey, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, tweeted. “This is a democratic failure much bigger than one craven office seeker.” [/INDENT] To be sure historically speaking, the Democrats used to be the party of Tammany Hall, and the Republicans would advocate clean elections. Gerrymandering is bipartisan. But we’ve seen a lot of GOP shenanigans without a lot of conservative push-back. That’s a big problem.
Honestly, I’d much prefer to see a resurgence of conservative patriotism, a resurgence of those who honor and respect the blood and treasure lost of our forefathers in pursuit of self rule.
JESUS TITTY FUCKING CHRIST WOULD YOU LET IT GOOOOOOOOOOO.
Did Hillary turn you down for prom? Did your mother not love you? Were you weaned too early? 2016 WAS TOO FUCKING YEARS AGO AND BERNIE LOOOOOOOOOOST GET A GODDAMN LADDER AND GET THE FUCK OVER IT.
You are ridiculous. This argument is ridiculous.
And of course I voted and was all GIMME THE D AND A GODDAMN STICKER.
I might be a little on edge.
Voting isn’t dating. It isn’t about finding your hero.
It’s about choosing which politicians you will put in office that you will then have the opportunity to try to put pressure on in whatever way you can, to move them closer to your own beliefs. And even Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp are far more responsive to pressure from the left than their Republican opponents in 2018 or 2012. (ETA: Probably the most disappointing trio of Dem Senators we’ve got right now, and even given that, two of the three voted against Kavanaugh. Zero out of three of their opponents would have.)
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They only had their supermajority for ~16 weeks, from September 25, 2009, to January 19, 2010, to be precise.
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And while they had it, they (a) insured tens of millions of previously uninsured people, and (b) made sure that those people’s insurance, and everyone else’s, covered pre-existing conditions. Before the ACA, it was a grim joke, about how you were never sure that your insurance would cover something big, because who knew what supposed evidence they might turn up that it was a pre-existing condition?
You were old enough to vote for Nader. Surely you remember this.
Oh yeah, and insurance had to cover an annual checkup, and had to cover contraception, and stuff like that.
They only had their freakin’ supermajority for sixteen weeks, but they made damned good use of it.
Oh yeah: I’m sure it gives consolation to the families of every person killed in Bush’s Iraq excursion that you were inspired by Nader. You want a difference between the parties? I’ll agree with you in a heartbeat that the Dems should have done a better job of standing up to Bush over Iraq, and seeing his crappy shell game for what it was. BUT if Bush hadn’t been President, nobody would have had to stand up to anyone, because nobody would have been put in charge of conjuring up reasons to go to war in Iraq.
And a lot of people would be alive today who were killed in that war. I’m so fucking glad you and your fellow Naderites were ‘inspired.’ I’m sure that made it all worthwhile. :mad:
Applaud the sentiments and agree with most of the words.
But fuck you, I didn’t vote Democrat.
You agreed that voting is important, and voted for the party who wants to stop people from voting?
Look at their location.
They mostly paid it back with other money they got from the government.
Thank you for sharing this expression with me. Something was lacking in my life, but I couldn’t identify it. I have just finished eating dinner, knocking back a few cold ones, relaxing after a day’s work and I thought I was feeling satisfied. Having read your expression I can say that I am feeling truly satisfied, now.
:dubious: You mean loans from the government which they are repaying with interest. Still not the “bailout” the vast majority of people on the left and right believe they got.
The utter dumbfucks in my state just voted for a woman who REPEATEDLY tried to take away their insurance coverage. Fuck these mouth-breathing dipshits. They looked at everything that they’ve seen over the past two years and said, “Yes, please, we’d like some more.” No conscience. No consequences. Just utter fucking stupidity and a government allowed to do whatever it wants. Fuck this country.