Not necessarily. I remember seeing a debate between Kay Bailey Hutchison and Richard Fisher on Meet the Press. Both were running for US Senate in Texas. Bailey looked like a homecoming queen, smiled constantly, spoke with confidence, and used mostly one-syllable words. She easily outshined her opponent and went on to win with 60% of the vote. I had no idea of her beliefs or platforms and I was ready to move to Texas to vote for her.
And vice versa. That was basically what Romney was saying with his 47% comment. Don’t bother trying to win over those that won’t vote for you anyway.
It never says that she can be president.
I think this is exactly it. Trump jumped ahead because the other Republicans held back and let him roast them to their face. They tried to come back at him with the normal politician speak and got crushed. Going negative works and wins you the primary. And it’s negative in a way that has never been before. Juvenile attacks on character, looks and personal tics are more important than going after policy or records. I fear it will be like this or worse in the future.
Sure everyone in that demographic wields power.
Penn Jillette has something interesting to say about it. Now Penn has always been a Libertarian and is certainly anti-Trump. When asked about Trump’s popularity with certain parts of the population he mentioned his background. Penn is from Western Massachusetts which was hit very hard with unemployment when factories closed. It is also being hit very hard with the heroin epidemic. He says Trump is the only one who is talking to those people. The Democrats typically hit their base in urban areas and blue coastal states. The Republicans typically hit their base with the wealthy and working middle to upper class and those who want to be. Those disenfranchised voters in former factory towns believe Trump is talking to them when he says he wants to make America great again. Unfortunately for them he doesn’t have an actual plan. But it’s enough that someone is listening. What Penn says makes sense. It’s a group that usually doesn’t come out for elections, particularly primaries. They have no power to retain and never did. It’s easy to use epithets to discount these people but their vote counts the same as everyone’s and this election they are voting.
Any specific purpose to mentioning gay?
Oh, man! I didn’t know there was gonna be a quiz!
Not only is there a test, you are naked.
Yup. I think the telling thing isn’t that Trump is actually saying these things, it’s that primary voters didn’t take him to task for them. To me, that’s the most astounding aspect of this whole thing- despite the near-constant reproofs and castigation from the media and other politicians, Trump’s popularity never waned significantly.
I’m not sure it’ll be the case in the future; I’m not at all convinced that it’ll be a tactic that works more than once- either he’ll lose, and look like the colossal asshole he is, or he’ll win and things will go pear-shaped in some way as a result of some dumb-ass thing he says, and either way, the tactic will be discredited, at least to that degree.
I can see the primary side of things becoming much more adversarial, but I don’t see it devolving to a huge game of “Yo Mama” jokes from politicians in expensive suits, either.
Well, that’s the end meaning, perhaps. Framing it in terms of losers “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what” - that’s a considerably different statement, and I for one am glad it nutted him as a candidate.
Yes, the GOP has been working quite hard for some time to suppress gay people, along with women, colored people, and well, pretty much everyone. They are the party of rich white old men who claim to be straight and Christian. All of their policies are intended to benefit only that particular group of people. They’ve managed to delude a bunch of white straight poor men into supporting Trump, because that group of people feels disenfranchised because people other than white straight men are gaining power and often doing better, economically, than the white straight men. It used to all you had to do was be born white, born male, born straight, go to high school, and get a job and you were set, but not anymore. And they are blaming everyone because well, it’s got to be someone’s fault, right? I see Trump’s rise as an effort by straight white men to seize back their former power.
I’ve never voted either GOP or Democrat in my life, but I’m voting Democrat this year. Have to stop Trump. Him in power would be a total disaster for all women, which means me. I’m kind of fond of my rights.
Well, now the orange orangutan has essentially put out a contract on HRC among the NRA crowd.
Un-fuckaducking-insanity.
Keep in mind that Trump is not an anomaly. Trump is the perfect Republican Frankenstein. He is the fulfillment of Republican policies that extend back to the Bush administration and before. (And like Doctor Frankenstein, the real problem is that the Republicans cannot control the monster they have created.)
The Republican party has very consciously and systematically promoted anti-intellectualism in this country to a terrifying degree. People like Bachmann and Palin were not just stupid themselves, but they publicly attacked the value of intelligence and education. That is to say, the Republican party routinely assaults the idea that education and science are valuable tools in governance and problem-solving.
They have actively fed this narrative to the uneducated working class: This notion that religion and good ol’fashioned common sense can provide simple and obvious solutions to complex problems, while reason and expert analysis cannot. This is nonsense, but people believe it nonetheless… and it has done immeasurable harm to our nation and contributed a great deal to where we are today.
Crash and burn.
Train wreck.
Which will it be?
Here is what “Trump as Presidential Candidate” has taught me. It showed me the entire GOP true colors. Their Dear Candidate says a lot of dumb things and insults a lot of people, yet they just stand by him with that BS “…but while I disagree with what he said, I still endorse his candidacy…”. John McCain, regardless of your political alignment, you would have to admit showed some backbone when some idiot tried to goad him into saying Obama was a Muslim. Where are these Republicans now? Are they so afraid of the extreme right of their party - the Tea Party and the Evangelicals, that they refuse to stand-up for principles? Most of them remain in silent approval.
I think the Trump candidacy has dragged the GOP further right than they had hoped or planned, and they are unwilling to kick the nut-job, racist, xenophobic, low-information voters to the curb, and return toward the center (where they could win back conservative Democrats as well as any number of other groups). We’ll see electoral Darwinism, hopefully, after this election round, where the ideals held by the far right get further marginalized away from mainstream, responsible, politics and government.
The media has dropped all pretense of fairness and objectivity now that Trump is the Republican nominee. This is why they report he hates Mexicans when all he’s criticized are the ones who’ve come here illegally, why they report he hate Muslims when he very common sensically just wants to come up with an effective way to vet them first to weed out those wanting to kill us, and why they say he insulted and kicked out a supporter whose baby was crying when in fact he was joking and she knew it (her defense of and ongoing support for Trump here)
I’m not going to be voting for Trump, but a deliberately lying, deceptive and manipulative press does no one any good. But this has been going on a long time. Remember when the press reported GHWB stated he tried to kick “her” little ass (speaking of Geraldine Ferraro) at the previous night’s debate when what he really said was he tried to kick ‘a’ little ass that night? The difference now is the media is admitting it’s bias and its dishonesty but pretending they exist only because of Trump…which of course is yet another lie to be piled on top of the others. It’s like Hillary Clinton writ large as the Forth Estate.
I agree with this 100%.
Its true, so I don’t care if its condescending. Other people may call it “tough love”, as the truth, when you have an unwilling audience, is hard to hear.
Consider that I’m right and they really don’t know what’s good for them. How can it be phrased to both express the objective truth and not be condescending?
Coal is a dying industry. It is not rational to hang on to it at the expense of safety violations, diminishing returns, illness, and worker exploitation. If a coal miner thinks that the GOP will somehow find more coal out of the ground and put in safety regulations so they won’t die while mining, then they are objectively wrong and stupid.
Immigration is a drummed up BS reason as well. Objectively look at the unemployment stats. Objectively look at how well the economy does under GOP and Democratic leadership. It is no contest that Democratic presidents are better, period, for jobs, growth, and wealth. You don’t have to be an economist, just know how to count, to realize that the recession happen in 2008, during Bush! And before that, the economy soared under Clinton! And before him, more recessions under Bush and Reagan! Even just look at the last 7.5 years, compare the economy from January 2009 to now, it is exponentially better. I’m not asking people to go out an get an economics degree, I’m just asking them to be truthful in looking at their livelihood under the GOP and Dems.
I, personally, am not here on this board to win anybody over, but to rant about stuff I want to rant about. I have no influence on the election, therefore I’m here mostly to say what should be done, rather than think about how I can say it nicer
None of this is true. Trump routinely makes outrageous statements and attacks entire categories of people. The media reports these events accurately.
And in response he bans members of the media from his “events”.
Except of course the vast majority of the media is right wing, not left wing. Giant corporations are not known for their left wing tendencies.
The idea of a “left wing media” is just Republican propaganda dating back to the 80s, due to the fact that the Right is *factually *wrong about pretty much everything it does and believes. They have to oppose honest reporting in order to function at all.
Right wing authoritarianism has become a much bigger problem than people realize. These people aren’t the fringes now, they are the mainstream of one major party.
People who feel their country is being taken away (white, conservative, hetero, christian males and their wives who feel they are the only rightful stewards of the United States) are starting to act like cornered animals now that people who do not fit into their demographic mold (non-whites, LGBTs, empowered women, non-christians, proud liberals, etc) now make up over 51% of the electorate. In history, groups like the KKK tend to rise when this happens, when people that white, male christian heteros consider their inferiors start invading ‘their’ country (1860s, 1920, 1960s, etc). The KKK is a domestic terrorist, proto-fascist movement. Expect more of the same in the coming years. Maybe it won’t be the KKK since that group is so stigmatized, but something similar.
I agree with this. In fact it’s why I withdrew support from Bernie after the primary. If the vast majority of POC don’t support him I have no rational reason to believe he’s the best candidate to achieve racial justice.
Not that the right doesn’t have its own brand of paternalistic bullshit.