Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

http://xenotherapeutics.org/about-xenotherapeutics/

XenoTherapeutics, Inc.

• Is a 501(c)(3) “For-Patient” Corporation
• Is a transparent, accountable advocate for progress
• Combines a business mindset with a moral imperative
• Will provide Xeno-Skin, a “once-impossible” humanitarian product to thousands of patients in need, worldwide

More on Xeno-Skin

http://xenotherapeutics.org/xeno-skin/

nice of him to make up with cruz like that

finally we know where the hair comes from

is trump one of the special genetically modified pigs

Human cadaver used in conjunction with Xeno-Skin doubles the benefit to patient

!

so to recap the main prongs of a trump presidency: giant wall, gags on press, white mob violence, underclass harvested for use in conjunction with xeno-skin

"for-patient" and "once-impossible" reminding me of the diner in my hometown whose menu uses quotation marks all over the place for emphasis, shattering trust: "REAL" SNOW CRAB OMELETTE, or "LOW CALORIE" OPTIONS, or TRY OUR "FRESH" GARDEN SALADS

it's all these right wing publishers, magazines, small organizations and their mailing lists that send out communcations to get people to give them money to repeal obamacare, defund planned parenthood, whatever the causes of the moment are

I think I'm fine with them getting bilked tbh

if you had asked me what this election was missing, I absolutely would've replied "xenoskin"

xeno-skin sounds like an hr giger-themed porno flick

Has Trump run any ads at all? What do they look like?

I almost feel bad for Clinton, of all people, because her competence is downright surreal compared to this fly by night snake oil salesman. Her campaign looks like a total pro, and his is all
http://www.movieactors.com/photos-stars/robert-preston-musicman-3.jpg

A beautiful WaPo story, just dripping with schadenfreude:

As we've long noted, Donald Trump has said he wants to run a different campaign than the one Mitt Romney did in 2012. On that front, he is succeeding handsomely.

But does he know the territory?

I'm just a juggalo, and everywhere I go, people know the part I'm playing.

daria-g:

very small dollar GOP donors aka vulnerable elderly people

I am not sure which is the sadder phrase: "Trump campaign donor" vs. "Trump campaign volunteer."

dlh:

so to recap the main prongs of a trump presidency

heh heh you said "prong"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2OtbnYcjlk

A beautiful WaPo story, just dripping with schadenfreude:

so otm, they're really relishing this

Oh man, I love when people in real-life borrow from dystopic sci-fi to the point of hilarity.

Actually calling your company "XenoTherapeutics" is some shit out of V: The Series or Xcom.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QihkWmS7dTI/hqdefault.jpg

the graph in that wapo article showing ad spending in 2012 versus now made me laugh out loud

Read about 10 or so comments in that Post post, and someone made the point that Trump is just a bit behind in a few states having spent nothing to Clinton's millions. But his national numbers are so shitty and getting worse that it'd be a miracle if he can dig out of this hole. Wouldn't put it past him, though. Five months is a long time, and clearly the previous 5 months of stupid haven't exactly held him back. Curious what the Clinton offensive will look like. For all his presume dirty dealing, things have been actually quiet on the oppo front. I mean, all it took was one FEC filing to reveal shady stuff like that Sterling Draper payment. What else must Trump have if you go back months or years? Clinton keeping the powder dry?

I keep trying to forecast Trump's business life post-defeat. I feel like he will have irreparably sullied his brand with a lot of people (beyond the demonstrable damage his brand and his companies have already incurred) and have a lot less money coming in as a result. I also think things like his FEC filings are going to finally underscore both how bad he is with money and how comparatively little money he actually has. Potential future victims of his frivolous lawsuits may be less likely to settle if he doesn't seem like such an imposing foe and may even countersue. I honestly don't think he ever considered how negative an impact this lark of running for president could possibly have on him. I guess it remains to be seen if there is an ultimate net negative impact, but I'm praying.

I'm worried that his underspending is all a dodge. Like JiC said, yeah he's doing badly, but nowhere NEARLY as badly as I would like. What if he really is a multi-billionaire and is just letting us all get too comfortable with the idea that he's a useless oaf? Then BAM all the money comes out and he hands out free ice-cream on every street in America.

If he plays it right, today's story will be about the difference between being broke and being lean.

Plus paying himself a lot.

Meantime, Preibus Agonistes

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/magazine/will-trump-swallow-the-gop-whole.html?_r=0

He was spouting racist bullshit for months/years before this campaign. Did it hurt his "brand" then?

at least it'll be interesting to see if all the money campaigns spend on ad buys, GOTV efforts, campaign offices + staff, mailers, and analytics actually do anything or if you really can blow them off and still win a presidential election in the US. i suspect you cannot.

This is from January but: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-brand-business-213515

I'm worried that his underspending is all a dodge. Like JiC said, yeah he's doing badly, but nowhere NEARLY as badly as I would like. What if he really is a multi-billionaire and is just letting us all get too comfortable with the idea that he's a useless oaf? Then BAM all the money comes out and he hands out free ice-cream on every street in America.

― how's life, Tuesday, June 21, 2016 9:50 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I honestly think the emperor has no craftiness. He's nurtured this idea of being secretly canny for so long but being a presidential candidate who's constantly under the microscope has done nothing but poke holes in that notion. Hyperconfident people have the hypnotic ability to convince many people that they must know what they're doing, but it's always important to remember that competence and confidence are often mutually exclusive.

See: Prince - and other powerful, egotistical millionaires - not having a will.

xpost I suspect it matters less than one might imagine, but then again, elections are not won by huge margins. The Trump campaign is an weird control for this experiment, anyway. It's a campaign explicitly predicated on lies and misleading and hate/anger. If anything, the Trump campaign has demonstrated thus far how little the truth matters, and if he does not lose by a huge margin and loses by only a slim margin - let's not even consider him winning for now - I wonder what that portends for future campaigns, well funded or no. Because the next step is some hateful, hurtful lunatic with deep pockets and a will to spend, and I don't really want to see how that experiment turns out.

It's just...every day there's a story that undermines his self-styled narrative of being such a savvy player. I was still reeling yesterday from the (admittedly unsurprising) news that he basically only ever reads printouts of Google News stories about himself before the FEC goldmine dropped into our laps.

Aw man, I know you didn't just compare Prince to Trump?

I know, sorry, Just still foremost in my mind.

xpost Dan, I think I saw that Politico article about his brand, but thanks for reminding me, anyway. I think it'd be funny if after this election cycle his condos and hotels were left populated only by wealthy die-hard Trump fanatics. The next step would be to liquidate all those places and build a right-wing GOP retirement community somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Then Trump cruise lines, a la Scientology. And then ship them all out to sea.

it'll be interesting to see if all the money campaigns spend on ad buys, GOTV efforts, campaign offices + staff, mailers, and analytics actually do anything or if you really can blow them off and still win a presidential election in the US. i suspect you cannot.

Uh, wait a minute; not to dis Mordy specifically but can we unpack this please?

If Clinton wins and Trump loses, should we conclude from this that she won and he lost because she used the normal mechanisms (ads, gotv, staff, mailers, analytics) and he didn't?

Or might we conclude that she won because she wasn't a hideous racist misogynist hell-beast depending on votes from the odious pits of Nazi slime?

Or maybe might we conclude that her win was (at least partially) due to her being a basically centrist coalition-building political operator whose success was built (at least partly) on forwarding an overall political program of progressive actions delivered inside the context of contemporary representative democratic politics?

Or maybe might we conclude that she won because conventional Democratic politics (with all its flaws) is still kinda sorta organized around a group of policy preferences that INCLUDE (i.e., not exclusively based around but still nevertheless include) sympathy for the downtrodden and a generally progressive attitude about how government ought to be used and how we all might move forward as a society?

I think you are over-analyzing that statement

The question at hand was "can you run a batshit crazy campaign that spends no money and still win?" If the answer is "no", the reason will be for a combination of all of the reasons you list. If the answer is "yes", we will be too busy leaping out of the nearest window to really analyze what happened.

DJP - OK, guilty as charged!

I just think there may be a lot of reasons why Clinton may (and should) win. Use of conventional methods is only won of those reasons.

Not being a racist dickbag from the foulest pits of Hades is another reason, and one that is worth considering.

gah xp, but the point remains the same

Trump winning would suggest you can win a presidential election without a campaign, but trump's loss wouldn't prove the opposite.

I'm relatively convinced that there's a decent percentage of the population that is well-shielded enough from actual news that they probably still basically only think of Trump as "that man from the TV show". Undecided potential voters who eschew political conversations and don't know much about Trump or the things he's said and don't see him as the racist dickbag that he is. This is one arena where Clinton's big money ad buys will hopefully have the greatest sway.

(I'm convinced of their existence because I've lived among these people. I just don't know how widespread a phenomenon that is.)

i feel like i'm being very obvious here, but surely the festering continuing failure of the republican party to coalesce around a palatable alternative to trump plays a role here, no? i feel like even today the party would abandon him if they had a republican to abandon him for.

that wapo article makes the point that lewandowski's being fired on a *monday morning* is proof (if proof be need be) that we're dealing with people who are uniquely bad at their jobs

even today the party would abandon him if they had a republican to abandon him for.

They've been offered plenty of alternatives. The plain fact is that the base doesn't want any of those choices; they've been very clear that Trump is what they want.

Going way back, the analogy is the editors of Playboy thinking their readership wants long-form articles, and the actual subscriber base is all like "where the titties at?"

I just think there may be a lot of reasons why Clinton may (and should) win. Use of conventional methods is only won of those reasons.

i guess it'll be v hard to tease it out but i do occasionally see poly sci ppl making claims that a particular GOTV spend, or analytics effort is worth X percentage points. idk how they can determine that beyond comparing a particular campaign to a prior one (like seeing how much worse Trump ends up doing than Romney or McCain) but you're right that trump has so many other sui generis elements to him that it'll probably be more difficult than usual to separate out how much his unconventional lack of campaigning hurts him v all the other terrible stuff about him.

I'm relatively convinced that there's a decent percentage of the population that is well-shielded enough from actual news

I'm increasingly convinced that a decent percentage of people get their news exclusively from googling themselves, which would answer a lot of questions.

so Trump's responsible for most of the printing of documents that still takes place in this country.

They've been offered plenty of alternatives. The plain fact is that the base doesn't want any of those choices; they've been very clear that Trump is what they want.

― william the comptroller

yes, they have been offered plenty of alternatives. there were, like, sixteen of them, and they were all fairly shitty. i wouldn't call any of them the equivalent of a playboy "long-form article", that's for sure. eventually it got down to trump and cruz, who is in his own way just as unpalatable as trump- he could never be the figurehead of a #nevertrump movement.

the point of view espoused by trump is not, that we can historically measure, a majority point of view. he can command the absolute allegiance of a sizable minority of republicans. getting from 35% or whatever to a majority has a lot to do with the other candidates they fielded and the failure of the party as a whole.

Lord Alfred, I weep for the forests being clear-cut to feed Trump's ego.

rushomancy - is there a nonshitty Republican that you think could have captured the Teahadi base AND the establishment, WHILE offering a substantive conservatism that would serve as a useful counterpoint to Clintonian Democratic policies?

Would love to meet this person if so