"Is it that the Dems don't understand white, working-class America?" No, that's not it

I think they’re highly related – but the disparities in treatment of black and white people are due to racism, whether at the individual, institutional, or societal level. Covering them up might be due to corruption.

But you appear to have missed my point – that we’re not so far from the past as we might like to think. Vidor, TX is a real place that’s ~100% white, in one of the blackest parts of the country (east TX and south Louisiana), and as recently as the 90s, federal efforts to bring black people into Vidor public housing failed after a KKK march.

Absolutely – you’ll notice that I’ve never claimed to not be a racist. The best I’ll say is that I try my hardest to not say or do racist things. If I do so, I hope I get called out on it so I can improve myself. And I will call out racist things I see others say or do to help them improve themselves. It’s possible I’ll be wrong sometimes, and if so, that can start a productive conversation. It’s not the end of the world to say something racist, and it’s not the end of the world to call someone out and criticize them for it. I’ve certainly said racist things in the past, and I’m very regretful for it.

That’s a single week of data. It might have gone down day to day, but in the longer term than a week it’s up significantly. If you want to say it’s going down, let’s look at the entirety of 2016 in a few weeks, and then we’ll compare it to the entirety of 2017 after that. That 11/12 might have been lower than 11/11 doesn’t tell us whether there are more hate crimes due to Trump’s campaign and election than before.

Every terrible thing like that (slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc.) requires baby steps. If we move backwards towards things like sundown towns, and restricting voting, we’re actually recreating parts of Jim Crow policies and practices. Slightly Jim Crow is a lot closer to Jim Crow than I’d like.

Atrocities have happened, even relatively recently, in this world. The way to make sure it never happens again is to make sure we never have the attitude “it couldn’t happen here”. We didn’t have a Holocaust in the 20th century, but we did intern Japanese Americans, and that was justified politically for decades afterwards. Yes, it could happen here, if we don’t constantly remain vigilant. Imagine public opinion towards Muslims if, God forbid, there were a catastrophic terrorist attack – worse than 9/11 (say, a smuggled WMD). That’s not a 0% chance occurrence.

Tell me more about this “reality” in which all Hillary voters think she’s wonderful and perfect and everyone else on the planet think she’s an evil demon.

The difference is, one is shitting on the floor, and one fell down the stairs. You are trying to rub the noses of those who fell down the stairs in the mess made by the one shitting on the floor, and you keep bragging about your efforts.
Yeah, we get it, she lost. Bernie would have gotten 95% of the vote. Shoulda coulda woulda. Now, was hillary a mistake? Electorally, apparently, as she did not win. I do not believe she was a mistake for her ability to do the job, but yeah, she’d been around long enough that she had developed a number of negatives. Majority of them are not even true, and the true ones are blown way out of proportion, but “perception is reality” is the key. If people really think she’s running a child sex ring out of a pizza place, there’s really not much chance for her, is there? Whenever I hear anyone run down her negatives, most of them are completely false. Would someone else have done better, maybe, but we won’t know that, because they didn’t run. It’s really starting to get old.

After seeing his show and reading his book, I’d have to conclude that people got dumber between then and now.

He’s not a politician. Pretty high high on my Trump-likes list.

What doesn’t happen is sometimes just as, if not MORE important than what does. The POTUS is an influencer of the highest order. I like his influence flavor on those topics much more than HRC, the LOSER with a track record of coming up short, and being on the wrong side of the law and this country’s best interests.

Trump won, Billary lost. Get over it.

I expect him to attemp to do what he and conservatives feel is good and right for the country. Why do you expect otherwise?

Just about any direction other than where we’ve been headed in the 21st century would be an improvement.

Sometimes you just gotta roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. The Sunni-Shiite bullshit that’s been making the Middle East an untenable situation for centuries needed/needs to be addressed.

Contributed to by thousands of bureaucrats and politicians over decades of neglect and abuse. What’s your point?

I’ll admit that geo-political brinkmanship was not an Obama strong suit.

Getting more Americans killed for nothing sounds like the best way to address it. Let me guess – it won’t be you that’s in the shit dealing with it, right?

Just curious. What does “Not a politician” mean? You really think he’s not a politician?

Trump’s a truth teller. He says he’s not a politician, so his supporters believe him.

They (many/most of them, at least) also believe that Obama is a secret Muslim. And some, apparently, believed HRC was running a sex slavery ring from a DC pizza shop.

“I have no fucking idea what the rules are, how anything works or what the difference is between a president and a king-Vote for me!” Yeah, I can see the appeal.

Hillary is a globalist and a corporatist. Her secret speeches confirm that she wants open borders and free trade. Who knows what else is in those speeches. A lot of people feel that our trade deals have harmed them. Trump promised to renegotiate our trade deals putting workers first and corporate interests second. Trump promised to get illegal immigration under control. There are 11 million extra unskilled or low skilled workers in this country that are competing for manual labor jobs and driving down labor prices. Bernie wanted to renegotiate trade deals but was sympathetic to illegal immigrants but he would have done better than Hillary along this vector.

Hillary is cozy with the oligarchs and plutocrats, in that she sucks up to them and they give money to her foundation. A lot of people feel like the Democratic party under Hillary would be no worse than the Republicans in sucking up to those with wealth and power. Bernie had a recipe book ready for when we decide to eat the rich.

Hillary and her supporters cheated in the primary. A lot of people don’t like cheaters. If we knew she was a cheater during the primary, we might have nominated Bernie. Bernie could have beaten Trump (how in the world did Trump go from clown on November 7th to political genius on November 9th?).

Not all Dems feel that way. Some of us realize that we fucked up. We don’t accept that Trump could not be beaten, he just couldn’t be beaten by Hillary. Others would rather preserve their Madonna image of Hillary and would prefer to elevate Trump to evil political genius or something.

What others?

Why do you believe what Trump says?

Not a “career criminal politician.” OR even just a garden-variety “career” politician.

How’s that work for ya? :wink:

Bernie was the man for the Democratic party this year. He would have run the table in this election.

Very regrettable.

Ryan, despite his undeserved reputation as a budget wonk, is socially just about as conservative as Pence. He might not author a fertilized-egg personhood amendment, but he’d probably vote for one. And similarly Pence is going to support Ryan’s budget proposals. They may have different areas of emphasis, but there aren’t issues where they take divergent stands.

Maybe you missed how pretty much the entire Republican party fell in line behind him this fall. They’re his allies, and he is theirs, especially since he doesn’t know shit about policy and isn’t trying to learn, so he’s got to rely on people like Ryan and Pence and McConnell.

He’s not going to veto a thing. Watch.

I have no freakin’ idea what you’re talking about.

Kinda like petulant teenagers, they just cannot ever admit they were wrong.

It’s not to please me. I just wanted to confirm that you are using the “not a politician” line like all the rest of the people who try to rationalize don the con: Without any admission that he is a politician in every way that you are objecting to in other people, except for a technicality.

Yeah. You know, just like when I get sick, I don’t go to a doctor. I’ve had bad experience with them. Instead, I ask Uncle Jim-Bob for his opinion, and so far I’ve only lost two limbs.

Can you name a single other situation where bringing in someone with no fucking clue how to do the job is a good idea?