At least it knocked Colin Kaepernick off the top of the news, except with the people who also seem to worship Trump because He’s Not Running As A Democrat.
I’m not sad to see this develop. It’s a reaction to absurdities that are constantly in the press. Trigger warnings, safe spaces, attacks on free speech, etc were prone to cause a backlash from modern liberalism’s ridiculous extremes.
In the society we have today where the average American probably doesn’t know the name of his mayor, senator, representative or the names of the 57 states a clown like Trump can capture the emotional mind space of a substantial number.
The vitriol from both sides makes for bitter partisanship where spiteful decisions are possible.
Marion Barry is one. Shame has nothing to do with how it reflects on a populace to elect a crack head.
Who said they were the same? That’s a strawman you’ve constructed. What’s same is the tendency to be tribal.
Not relevant. Supporting nutty ideas and the nuts who hold them is not unique to the right. Just look at Sanders.
Nope. Never said that the political parties were identical. I said there are common properties in behaviors of the people that make them. This is true. Both sides are full of ignorant hive-minded fools. At this moment in time we, the Republicans, have been hijacked by a clown. You, the Democrats, have a sociopathic crook. Scary to think the sociopath may be a better choice.
The beauty of checks and balances is that if the other branches do their duty, which I have no reason to believe they will, “dangerous” politicians can be kept in check.
What? Of course it’s relevant. Being elected a representative from a district in Wyoming with a few thousand constituents where a small nutty group can get you elected is entirely different from having widespread support amongst the entire country’s electorate. Even if you can say “Oh yeah? Well Bumfuck, Arizona elected a weird democrat once!”, that’s nothing in comparison to having a viable presidential candidate that’s as much of a disaster as trump.
So in terms of policy ideas, competance, life experience, values, honesty, etc., you feel that Sanders and Trump are exactly the same? That just proves how delusionally you cling to “both sides are equal!” no matter what.
You’ve decided “both sides are equal!” is how the world works and now you’re going to work backwards to justify it no matter how ridiculous you have to be when you handwave away actual differences.
Since I never said that why are you arguing against it as if I did? You making an assertion of what one said that isn’t said and clearly wasn’t said doesn’t seem to be the most honest debate tactic.
Calling me delusional when you are imagining the premise is ironic.
Okay, would you care to explain why you consider Sanders’s “nutty” ideas comparable to Trump’s?
You said that democrats would be supporting Trump if he had a D next to his name, because, as you know, all sides are always exactly precisely equal at all times, and therefore no one can ever actually have a fault or a flaw that is unique to them, or their side, or their decisions, because the other side is just as bad.
What are the odds, do you think, that two large disparate groups with different motives and beliefs being the exact, precise level of falliable in this way? It seems astronomically unlikely.
You’d be correct.
But you are mistaken if you don’t think that a large amount of uneducated and stupid voters on the left don’t vote for candidate X strictly because of (D). Are those candidates exactly the same as Trump? Of course not. Is the behavior of the unthinking electorate analogous? Yes it is.
You’re ignoring so many factors in your rush to absolve yourself of supporting a repugnant political movement. At least I assume that’s your motivation here - you’re a partisan republican and you know deep down what this says about your party, so you use “but democrats would do the same thing!” to make it seem like what you’re doing really isn’t so bad.
Are there partisan democrats? Of course. Anyone who falls within the norm of expected presidential candidates is probably going to rack up 35% or so of the voting population.
But what if a candidate fell significantly outside the norm? Then I’m not so sure the response would be identical from both sides. The democrats are much more weakly unified - there are factions that have significant disagreement within the party. But Republicans have emphasized partisanship and party-over-all to a much greater degree. They kind of need to. They’re trying to merge religious assholes with libertarian types and the rich and a lot of very disparate subgroups. They’ve chosen hard-line partisanship as a response to the differing wants and values of those different groups. They’ve been preaching partisan strength and fighting in lockstep to a much higher degree than democrats do. By contrast, democrats are far less weakly bound together, but are more overall similar than the groups that make up the republicans. Party above all else is a much weaker drive for them. There’s also an issue where conservatism tends to psychologically favor unity and authority compared to liberalism which inherently tends to be critical of power structures. There’s all sorts of reasons why liberals might react differently than conservatives on these issues, given that they’re of entirely different values and mindsets.
There’s also a question of what’s outside the norm. If the Democrats went nuts and decided to elect an anti-establishment candidate, he’d look something like Sanders. When the Republicans do it, it looks like Trump or Cruz. Remember that part? It’s not as though Trump stole the election from some massively qualified candidate - if he wasn’t nominated, Cruz would be, and that very well could have been even worse.
But fine - so the democrats nominate their looney guy, an honest and sincere guy who’s dedicated his life to public service who clearly wants to do right by his constituents. Are his ideas impractical? Maybe. But he’s clearly well-intentioned and doing his best to make a positive change in the world.
And you think that’s totally the same thing as a narcissistic man-child who has managed to create infamy for himself by creating high-profile bankruptcies, starring in reality shows, committing fraud, and stiffing workers with his dad’s money. Who lies in transparent ways, who’s uninformed about the word and incurious, who surrounds himself by yes men, who’s pathologically insecure and lashes out in bizarre ways, who has no real interest in public service nor the welfare of the people he’s accountable to, but only his brand and his image.
To you, this is “see, the republicans picked a weird candidate, and so did the democrats! everyone is the same!”, whereas to anyone with a shred of integrity it’s a night and day difference.
I don’t know why you thought it was a good idea to try this line of attack this time. That Trump is funny is something even comedians who hate him can concede. If you’re not going to start a thread about that, don’t use “Trump is no longer funny” as a title.
I didn’t advocate anything in particular. If I was to give any actual recommendation to the media, it would be to print news which is newsworthy. “There is a man named Trump who was nominated by the Republican party. Here is his platform. Here is the analysis of the platform by a number of experts.” And then move on to other news. You don’t have to religiously update the world on whether Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, every day, for 12 months. There should be new news every day, not the same news every day. That someone has been nominated for President is newsworthy. That the presidential nominee has done something horrible and offensive is probably also newsworthy. But it’s not newsworthy after the 20th time. Spending your time covering new Trump gaffes instead of things that actually matter just breaks people out of thinking about what matters. Following politics like it’s a boxing match, puts people into the mentality that they should back a side and cheer, even if their boxer was discovered to have been doping.
But really, my recommendation would be that we ban campaigning, give Americans a week off, during which we holds debates all day between different candidates all up and down local and Federal government. Locations are organized where candidates or their representatives can come to meet with the people and answer questions and provide brochures. That transportation to these locations be guaranteed. And so everyone can vote based on research and some real time to think, rather than via some strange national sports match that does nothing but polarize the populace and makes them forget entirely about every other elected position except the Presidency - which is perhaps one of the least important roles in your average American’s life.
>imblyign the elites know any better
If anything the success of Trump cries for the need for a true populism in America-a mass nationalist proletarian movement much like the one that brought Huey Long to power 80 years ago.
Serious question: Could a Trump have come so close to the Presidency before 9/11 ? Have relatively recent events changed America’s soul, or was this flaw there all along?
I do realize it’s a matter of degree, between whether just 35% of us vote for a chump, or 45% of us do. OTOH, most of the GOP establishment is behind Trump. The Establishment opposed Goldwater more than they do Trump, but compared to Trump, Goldwater is an Abraham Lincoln.
A year ago, I was encouraging Dopers to register (R) so they could force a GOP fracture and easy victory for the Democrats in 2016. My face is red. My only consolation is that nobody pays attention to me.
Regardless of what happens in November, Republicans will no longer be able to use words like integrity, ideas, or *intelligence *and not be laughed at. Especially comical will be the assertion that it is informed intelligent Americans who vote (R).
…Yes. That is indeed the conclusion one might reach upon seeing Trump so close to the oval office.
A “true populism” would favor worker’s rights, better police, improvements in the justice system, environmental protection, regulation of predatory banks, etc.
Trump supporters are on the wrong side of all those issues; they’re the racists encouraging police to target innocent blacks, the xenophobes and homophobes who oppose liberal progress, et cetera.
What percentage of Sanders’ supporters now support Trump? Whatever that number is, any connection must be just at the reptilian-brain level. The average American isn’t very smart and 49% of us are even stupider than that.
When a country divides into two parties along largely regional lines, one might expect similarity in morals. The spectrum of morality is probably about the same in Connecticut as it is in South Carolina. Even slavery may not change this: some of America’s most honorable leaders were slave-owners!
But today’s D-R division is not based on region, despite the oft-viewed red-blue map. A red state has 40+% D’s; blue states have 40+% R’s.
When the party division is city vs rural, or between two intelligent economic theories, the same assumption of similar morality might be the default.
But in America of today the D-R division is not based on region, occupation, or economic theory. Of course there are exceptions, but many studies have shown that Americans gravitate to one party or the other based on different cognitive modes. It might be unfair to say that the GOP now actively selects for venality, but* it is difference in moral outlook that defines today’s parties*, not political or economic theory. So difference in morality is what we should expect.
Several top Republicans of honor (Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, Charlie Crist, even Elizabeth Warren!) have switched to the Democratic Party. I’m not sure whether to applaud this or deplore it — the desertions have just hastened the GOP’s mutation into a fetid rubbish heap.
I dunno how tribal the Democrats are.
Hillary Clinton is a centrist/mainstream Democrat slightly further to the right than Obama. She has a track record of either boring effectiveness and competency or ineffectiveness, but no disasters. She is a cookie-cutter shape of a generic Democrat with no charisma. She’s also a career politician, bought and paid for.
Yet the number of Democrats holding their nose to vote for her, not voting for her, or looking elsewhere is pretty high. It’s the only reason anyone is even still talking about Trump like he’s a potential winner.
If Democrats were tribal, this election would be over. As long as Hillary has a pulse, she wins.
Since that’s not the case, we’re talking about Trump like he has a chance. And that’s pretty sad.
Trump is the result of an insidious feedback loop in American politics. Some people were slightly miffed at the government, so they voted for people who promised to change it, the government got worse, those same people got angrier; lather, rinse, repeat. 9/11 did not start that process or make it possible. I date it to the early-'90s, but it may go back further.
And Trump’s supporters are not necessarily wrong to be angry. They’re wrong to think that Trump, win or lose, will do anything to make them less angry.
Not only that, but the Republicans nominated Trump specifically BECAUSE he is repugnant as a person. They love his heel persona. If he had the exact same “policies” without the asshole act, he wouldn’t have nearly the support.
No he’s still funny, but Hillary is killing me right now.
Trump has never been funny. An oddity, yes, but never funny. A person with the moral fiber of a snake is anything but amusing. What is shocking to me is that so many people can suspend disbelief to the point where they would willingly allow a thieving, lying, racist, homophobic misogynist to represent the American ideal. What they are saying, in effect, is that they are fine with having all Americans portrayed by this raving lunatic. If I were still living overseas, I would not know how to explain this to my local employees.