This is a super duper cool exchange among y’all that really helps everyone understand the election better. Thanks to all of you for your keen insight!
I wonder if one of you might expand on the “rubber/glue” question.
You’re most welcome.
Hey, as long as everyone involved is consenting, whatever sexual fetishes you enjoy are fine with me.
And speaking of sexual fetishes: one further factor in the “Bill Clinton got a pass” argument is that at the time the GOP were throwing vast amounts of bullshit and dirty tricks at him (as indeed is the current practice), which had the effect of diluting credible accusations against him. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to learn that Bill had coerced one or more young women into having sex with him against their will, but since unlike Trump Bill hadn’t openly bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women AND since at least some of the women he’d had sex with did so consensually (including Monica), it’s not surprising that most Democrats didn’t just automatically take the word of the Republicans and some of the women they put forward that rape had occurred (particularly as their stories tended to change over time and, Carville’s scummy characterization aside, a certain amount of money had indeed changed hands in some cases). Again - I’m not saying that he didn’t, only that the GOP had muddied the waters so thoroughly it was impossible to tell.
If you want people to take your cries of “Wolf!” seriously, don’t have a wolf alarm going off constantly for 24 hours a day every single day.
This is a good way of putting it. My default is to believe folks who say they’ve been sexually assaulted, just as that’s my default for folks who say they’ve been victims of other crimes. But just because that’s my default doesn’t mean it’s what I always do.
Various factors can make me less or more likely to trust a particular accusation. evidence and corroborating witnesses make me more likely. The potential for personal gain from the accusation, a history of false accusations, contradictory evidence make me less likely.
And even when I believe victims, if I’m supposed to take action against the alleged assailant, I need more evidence than I otherwise would.
The evidence against Bill for sexual assault doesn’t meet the level of my taking action against him, even to the level of voting against him. The evidence against Trump does.
Given a choice between Cruz ® and Trump (D), I would very reluctantly vote Cruz. Given a choice between Kasich ® and Trump (D), I’d less reluctantly vote Kasich. Given a choice between Snowe ® and Trump (D), I’d enthusiastically vote Snowe. Under no circumstance would I abstain from voting: Even if I thought the system was so hopeless that armed revolution was the only option, I’d vote for whoever would make the revolution easiest.
And while Trump’s misogyny is indeed repulsive, that’s not the primary reason I’d vote against him. The primary reason is that I think that he’s all too likely to do something insane like nuke Mexico. There really are some things worse than pussy-grabbing.
Agreed. I would absolutely hate voting for someone like Ted Cruz, but I’d be absolutely obligated to vote for him over the Democratic Trump, because the worst-case scenario is a possible nuclear war under Trump. (Although I would hope that even an insane and unstable President couldn’t actually unilaterally decide to start a nuclear war and actually have it happen…)
The Democrats essentially had two candidates, HRC and Bernie and the primaries led to a clear choice between them. The Republicans had a plethora of mostly indistinguishable candidates and Trump. Had the Republicans been able to narrow it to, say Kasich vs. Trump, the outcome might have been different. The Notrump voters might have prevailed.
Didn’t sexual indiscretions (to put it mildly) sink John Edwards just two elections ago?
Democrats would not have run Trump. We already had a groper-in-chief once. It took all these years to rehabilitate him.
From my more limited experience being overseas, Democrats just aren’t as angry as the wing of GOP voters who support Trump and are less likely to see America going to hell in a basket. Both of these are reasons why Donald has done so well with his crowd.
I just don’t see him pulling the same level of support if he ran as a D.
Nor is there the same type of media as Fox, Drudge Report, et al which fuels the fury while making up stories and priming the viewers to disregard facts.
However, I think that if either party were to were to obtain a monopoly, then they would elect increasingly corrupt leaders, at least at the local level, simply because of human nature.
Are you reading the same MB that I am? :dubious:
So true.
Hell, Monica seduced Bill.
Well, that’s their fault. The GOP and Karl Rove have spent 20 years making up lies about Hillary, which indeed worked to the degree that most people who wouldnt vote for a Dem anyway really hated her. Thus a low approval rating. Thus, the GOP thought she was a easy target and fell all over themselves trying to be her opponent.
Note, however, that not one moderate Republican ran a serious race… unless you count Kasich, who came closest to being a Moderate.
There’s a lot of focus in this thread about the sexual indiscretions, which is understandable because of the huge impact the Billy Bush tape had on the current election cycle.
But, and I feel somewhat uncomfortable admitting this, being a sexual predator alone is not disqualifying to be president.
If we were in the current electoral situation, with the supreme court hanging in the balance, and the choice was between a completely middle-of-the-road Republican (say, Mitt Romney) and a completely middle-of-the-road Democrat (say, Joe Biden), then extremely credible reports that the democrat had groped or even raped women wouldn’t necessarily be enough to make me vote for the Republican, because the decades-long legacy of Supreme Court nominations is so vitally important. And there’s no reason it wouldn’t be possible for a sexual predator also to be a competent president. (Although a factor in the other direction would be the damage done to the “brand” of the party by electing a rapist, but I feel like that’s a second-order consideration.)
The reason that reasonable Republicans should vote against Trump is not because he’s a serial groper, it’s because he’s utterly and dangerously unqualified to be president, and could quite plausibly do immeasurable damage to the USA and the world. The groping is just the cherry on top of a shit sundae.
Didn’t the Republican primary eventually reach the point where it was Trump versus only 1 or 2 others, with Kasich being one of the two?
Was that not narrow enough for them?
For another data point of Democrats being willing to back away from and actual candidate when they decided he was damaged goods, don’t forget Thomas Eagleton. Not that it did them a lot of good …
By then it was too late. There was no way for the last two to get enough delegates to overcome Trump. I bet the Republicans are wishing they had super delegates right about now.
Yes, but only after most states had voted, and there wasn’t enough opportunity for a Not-Trump to gain ground.
The fact it wasn’t is proof that the GOP, as a party leadership apparatus nominally in control of the Republican Party, is too weak and too out-of-touch with its various bases of support to run a national party.
The GOP has a stupid balancing act: It has to protect the business interests which are at the core of the party, from the leadership’s perspective, but it can only get enough votes to do that by appealing to people who largely find such business interests repugnant, in whole or in part.
For example, I’m sure it would love to appeal to the stem cell businesses and biotech in general, but it runs into opposition from the “Partial Birth Abortion Is Literally Genocide” Radical Christianist crowd. If you piss off that Religion of Peace too badly, we go back to abortion clinic bombings, and local terrorism is bad for business.
But the most important line, and the one it cannot walk, is between the business interests’ desire for open borders and open trade and the Angry Poor White People’s desire for less job competition and more local manufacturing. It’s flatly contradictory. They can dog-whistle racism all they want, they can’t change the fact you can no longer get a union job at a factory straight out of high school (or eighth grade, depending) and live in the same town as your pappy for the rest of your life.
So the normies have very little to run on and the exciting candidates have a platform even the GOP finds appalling, albeit not for the same reasons as sane people do. It’s just lose-lose, every single time.
I thought they were opposed to Death With Dignity.
