‘Right up to the end’ is post-Comey. That’s totally consistent with what I’m saying - that Hillary ran a campaign that would have been more than good enough to win, absent Comey’s intervention with 11 days to go.
Trump had caught up in the polls before the first debate. Immediately after that, she opened up a solid lead that she never relinquished until Comey. And the polls showed that she’d widened her lead after the third debate by enough to get the pundits talking about a landslide.
Yes, the pundits’ ‘landslide’ chatter was overstated. But the fact that she was doing well enough that it was merely somewhat overstated rather than blatantly delusional - that’s my point.
The Democrat collective, and only the Democrat collective, were head over heels with ol’ Hillary’s stage performance. And yet, Hillary still managed to lose the general election.
I’ve noticed that “claiming” victory is not the same thing as actually being victorious. YMMV.
Yeah, I’m sure there’s millions of them. It’s an epidemic!!! PANIC!
Hey, seriously, do you think the number of Democrats who think dreadlocks are cultural appropriation is greater or less than the number of Republicans who think Hitler did nothing wrong? My money’s on the Hitler thing.
I fail to see the relevance of the comparison. A number of the people who think dreadlocks are cultural appropriation aren’t actually Democrats (and I never claimed they were). I’m also pretty sure the number of Republicans who think Hitler did nothing wrong is vanishingly low; even ardent Neo-Nazis tend to blame Hitler’s interference for Germany losing World War II, which means they did think Hitler did something wrong though they agree with the evil stuff he did. And a lot of Neo-Nazis don’t actually identify as Republicans. So you’re ranting about some arbitrarily specific and meaningless numbers.
Also, the ‘dreadlocks are cultural appropriation’ crowd was one small example of a broader phenomenon that I identified (and you ignored) in my first post, and you seem to be completely ignoring the broader phenomenon first to state the obvious fact that a video of one person doing something only shows one person doing something, then to (much like the Clinton campaign) rant about ‘Republicans are EVUL’ instead of saying anything substantive about the issues raised.
I’m willing to bet that about 80% of my grad-school colleagues believe dreadlocks are cultural appropriation. So that’s 115 people right there. I’m willing to bet that at least half of the people graduating this year from my undergraduate alma mater believe that. There’s another 5,000.
Seriously, if you can’t listen to radical lefties about the drawbacks of radical leftism, who can you listen to? I don’t believe me or Pantastic can be referred to by any stretch of the imagination as moderate; we’re reporting what we’ve witnessed within our own cultural circle. I couldn’t speak to the Hitler thing, but I think believing Hitler did nothing wrong is much more extreme than believing dreadlocks are cultural appropriation.
As a proportion of leftists they probably are in the minority, but it doesn’t matter because they have the loudest, most obnoxious voices, they are the ones whose blogs are getting shared and writing articles in HuffPo, so they are having way more influence over mainstream liberal thinking than it seems folks want to believe.
This claim seems overblown. I realize you were offering an opinion, but it would be nice to see some support for it; it just doesn’t ring true.
Any social media outlet–Facebook, blogs, websites focused on politics, etc.–will be filled with extreme voices. It sounds as though you are saying that the leftist extreme voices are somehow more numerous or more pervasive or more influential than the rightist extreme voices, and that’s what I think you need to back up with some evidence–from what I can see, extreme right views are not at all rare or subdued on the Internet and other media.
Your thesis appears to be something along the lines of 'the progressive movement and its values are delegitimized by the existence of loud leftwing extremists.’ Do you similarly believe that the conservative movement-and-values are delegitimized by the existence of loud rightwing extremists…?
I consume a lot of media, social and otherwise, and I tend to attribute loudness and obnoxiousness on such media to personal failings, rather than to political views. Neurotics and jerks exist in every political classification. I can’t think of any instance in which a loud, obnoxious person calling themselves ‘a progressive’ has changed my position on any issue; I take little interest in discussions of Cultural Appropriation and such. To me they seem to be about one-upmanship and power grabs, rather than about real progressivism. People who thrive on that sort of thing are interested in something other than human progress. They are interested in the little thrill they get when someone they harangue displays shame; oooo, I’m important!
Again, if you are claiming that there are few or no loud and obnoxious voices on the right, or that such voices have little influence, then I think you haven’t been paying attention. Plenty on the right engage in the same sort of power plays as do the ‘cultural appropriation police’—what are you, politically correct? want a nanny state, do you? why do you hate America? …etc. etc. etc. There are people on the right who do that sort of stuff all day long, because it makes them feel special and powerful.
I’m specifically not saying ‘Republicans are EVUL’. I’m saying that you’re judging a group of millions of people based on the behavior of one person who may or may not be a member of that group. You’re doing that for “progressives” Why aren’t you doing that for Republicans (more than one of whom is a sheepfucker), or right wingers (more than one of whom thinks Hitler did nothing wrong), or lunch ladies (more than one of whom is married to her cat)? Why do you only do this for progressives? And even if Spice Weasel is right and there are hundreds of people who also think this way, hundreds is still 0% of the total group. Personally, I try not to judge groups by the behavior of the 0%.
Yes,you are. When for no good reason you start discussing how many Republicans think Hitler did no wrong, you’re clearly just doing the ‘Republicans are EVUL’ thing.
I’m talking about actions that a group has taken or refused to condemn and the detrimental effect of those actions on the power of an accusation of ‘racism’. I’m not sure what ‘judging’ you think is going on that has your panties in a bunch, it seems that if I say progressives are anything other than perfect in every way then it upsets you past the point of making a coherent argument.
Because progressives are the ones who do what I’m talking about and Republicans aren’t. It’s really that simple.
Congratulations, that’s basically exactly wrong. The actual point I was making is that you can’t judge groups by the actions of the 0% (for example, the 0% of Republicans who think Hitler did nothing wrong). That’s my whole point. I’m not sure how you missed it.
Well, if we’re judging groups by the actions of the 0%, then how do you address the fact that 0% of Republicans think Hitler did nothing wrong? That seems much worse than what 0% of progressives are doing.
Did you post this in the wrong thread? I’m not aware of anyone who made the claim you appear to be disagreeing with. It would likely be off-topic if they did, since this thread is about the Clinton campaign and not a Republican’s campaign.
I don’t know who the ‘we’ you’re talking about is, but you seem to be responding to arguments that I didn’t make with criticism that doesn’t make any sense. If I assume you’re actually responding to me, it appears that you believe that the Clinton campaign’s accusations of racism were an effective strategy, or that the term hasn’t been overused to the point that it’s lost it’s effectiveness, and consider me saying so to be judging a group by the actions of the 0%. Or perhaps that it’s unfair for me to criticize a part of Clinton’s campaign as being ineffective without also criticizing Trump’s campaign at the same time for sort of the same thing. You also keep asserting that 0% of people make statements that I have encountered multiple times (and multiple times on this board) and that have received national media coverage, which seems at odds with reality.
None of this really makes any sense or has any relevance to the discussion, so enjoy yourself.
Firstly, one can be very experienced and consequently well qualified even if one made mistakes during the time one spent gathering that experience. Wise people understand that. Only inexperienced and/or blindly partisan people think that the fact that someone made mistakes during their career means they are not experienced. If someone says that, it’s usually a sign that their quarterbacking knowledge was gained entirely from an armchair.
If you can’t find find a few mistakes or changes of mind during someone’s career, they probably either never did anything, or are a mindless blockhead incapable of learning.
Secondly, when I say HRC was experienced and one of your rebuttals is she “got appointed to a position by the Democratic establishment” you’re just not listening. A guy who got a job as a plumber because their father owned the company, but who has thirty years of experience as a plumber, has thirty years of experience as a plumber. No matter how they got the job in the first place.
When someone discounts decades of experience because that experience has a few blemishes, that means they are looking for an excuse to do so. HRC’s campaign should have avoided this subject for reasons I stated above, not because it was a point regarding which she had no rational rebuttal.
Hillary Clinton said half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable and irredeemable by dint of being racist or xenophobic or et cetera. I know some Trump supporters who (a) I don’t think are racist or xenophobic, but who (b) want the law enforced against illegal immigrants, and who (b) some would call racist or xenophobic or whatever. And if someone were to ask me whether Hillary Clinton meant one of them, I’d have to shrug and say “I honestly don’t know; I can’t tell what she has in mind. Really, she’s no different than anyone else who says Like Half Of Those People Are Incorrigible And Worthless, But You’re One Of The Good Ones – leaving me to wonder, for any given one of 'em, which half that person would be categorized in.”
I’m curious: next time a Dem runs for President, do you recommend following Clinton’s example by vaguely saying half the folks supporting the GOP candidate are deplorable and irredeemable by dint of being racist or xenophobic – leaving guys like me to again wonder, wait, are you insulting this individual but not that one?
Uh-huh. I’d genuinely appreciate an answer to the questions at the end: would you recommend, to someone making a run at the presidency next time around, that it’d sure be a smart strategy to follow in her footsteps by saying that half the folks who support the other candidate are deplorable to the point of being irredeemable?
After all, you can breezily assure him or her, surely people will give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to any given person, unless they’re looking for a fight. Would that be your advice?