I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

xps Yes, that's one of the reasons why, Treeship.

Trump would go after Sanders for not understanding how business works, unlike all the "good" Jews

i've been wondering if he'd use sanders relative lack of religious faith against him esp if he can point to religious jews that he's related to

Nice letter, sleepingbag http://correctrecord.org/an-open-letter-to-senator-bernie-sanders/

― Hungry4Ass, Wednesday, February 24, 2016 5:41 PM (4 minutes ago)

sometimes i pass the time on twitter just looking at these peoples tweets and wondering if they have a shred of self-respect or what they tell themselves

Trumps attacks aren't really political, they're all about the personal. Jeb! is weak, and his mom has to save him. Cruz is a liar, just a born liar, just... and also born in Canada. Rubio, he must be born in Cuba, right? So he won't attack either Sanders or Clinton on their policies.

The two times it has come close to backfiring has been with Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, right? When he does it to a woman 1) they're more unfazed, as they've dealt with this shit all their lives 2) it plays more badly to the general public. With Jeb it's sorta, kinda funny, you can base an SNL skit around how hapless he is in dealing with it. Misogynistic abuse won't be laughed at in the same way.

That's a fair point, Frederik.

kind of surprised we haven't seen more Candian Cruz stuff. i mean, Trump really went to the mat with his Obama birther campaign a few years back. hiring a crack team of P.I.s who "found some very, very interesting stuff, yuge stuff".

I agree w that. Gaming out how personal attacks on Hillary will go (and it's true, these are really the only kind of attacks Trump gets mileage out of) is a little difficult. They may appeal to mouthbreathers that already are inclined to hate her, but it's gonna be pretty off-putting to everyone else. Probably.

xp

Chomsky on Trump's rise:

People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It's interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I'm old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomsky-we-owe-rise-trump-fear-and-breakdown-society

The call was for members of The GROUP, a secretive cabal of prominent conservatives led by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and the Senate Conservatives Fund’s Ken Cuccinelli.

this is *awesome*

there's nothing he has to find - there's a very obv constitutional challenge to cruz' eligibility, it would go to the courts. it would be funny if a newly left-wing supreme court ended up allowing cruz to run out of the principle of expanding the meaning of "natural born citizen." it would be funnier if cruz was the republican party's last chance to beat trump and a lower court ruled that cruz was not eligible and then it went to an evenly split supreme court bc republicans refused to vote on obama's candidate and was sent back to the lower court.

xp to will

xpost Trump is probably smart enough to know to attack Clinton in terms of corruption and untrustworthiness.

i think there is a suit against cruz right now that he's trying to get thrown out

yup

Cruz doesn't need help with looking ridiculous and unappealing

there's nothing he has to find

true. just figured we'd get more of him flogging it out on the trail. he's obv mentioned it a few times but hasn't gone full-tilt Trump-style with it.

maybe he feels he doesn't need to

damn it the one time he exercises restraint...

Trump will use it if Cruz gets momentum, he did it before after he won in Iowa

"But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream."

Huh?

are you familiar with the '30s, labor unions, and the Old Left?

Williams: What are your opinions on the surprising progress of Donald Trump? Could it be explained by a climate of fear?

Chomsky: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period.

chomsky was born in 1928, i wouldn't put much stock in his 8yo analysis of political sentiment in the 30s

i mean The Grapes of Wrath reads like a "communist" tract these days

The two times it has come close to backfiring has been with Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, right? When he does it to a woman 1) they're more unfazed, as they've dealt with this shit all their lives 2) it plays more badly to the general public. With Jeb it's sorta, kinda funny, you can base an SNL skit around how hapless he is in dealing with it. Misogynistic abuse won't be laughed at in the same way.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, February 24, 2016 10:47 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this instantly leads me to darrel hammond on snl calling bush 'jebra'. like debra because hes a woman u see.

In 1947, Steinbeck made the first of many trips to the Soviet Union, this one with photographer Robert Capa. They visited Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Batumi and Stalingrad, some of the first Americans to visit many parts of the USSR since the communist revolution. Steinbeck's 1948 book about their experiences, A Russian Journal, was illustrated with Capa's photos.

it could very well be that it read like a communist tract in 1939 too.

it's very possible to have things burned into your head at age 8 and be able to assess them from an adult perspective. I've had similar experiences re the Nixon era.

just what i know of the history it's very obvious that the oppressed/deprived had better, more impactful organizing options / group action available to them in the Depression.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061005171237/http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/banned.html

Yeah, In Dubious Battle was actually about Communists.
2xp

i just don't trust chomsky or anyone to tell me how the political environment today compares to when they were 8 years old. i don't care how precociously political they were

So he's saying labor became too militant in the 30's? I never thought of political organizations not being in the mainstream as having a negative effect on hope...probably because I never thought mainstream politics could be anything but alienating.

only among those 1939 readers who could foresee Steinbeck trips in the late '40s i guess

xxxxp

when i was 8 my public school class wrote letters to the soldiers in the gulf war thanking them for their service

morbz, look at the wayback link i posted - there was a huge uproar in 1939 too

Chomsky is not relying SOLELY on his childhood memories, so yes, we know you hate him

i knew there was controversy re GoW, but initiated largely by the fatcat class who also hated Roosevelt

also, dirty words and breastfeeding

i agree with chomsky insofar the only solution i can see to right wing populism is left wing populism, which is part of the reason i feel like sanders could be more viable than hillary in the general. trump's appealing to racists, sure, but a lot of the people who like him do so because they are "fed up" with the establishment, especially re. the idea that their interests have been "sold out," which, you know, is true -- over the past howevermany years economic growth has not led to a rise in median wages
'

the Democratic Party did not throw organized labor over the side until the Clinton '92 run-up

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2013/11/08/modern-democrats-would-view-john-f-kennedy-as-a-reaganite-extremist/#26fc9e1c79ab

just what i know of the history it's very obvious that the oppressed/deprived had better, more impactful organizing options / group action available to them in the Depression.

maybe for white males

those are the people propelling trump's rise though

ii think it would have been better if the labor movement expanded to include a more diverse array of people rather than evaporated the way it did

yes, of course, the world was different 70 years ago; the racial wall of the New Deal is well chronicled. And still the NAACP had more integrity than the Congressional Black Caucus PAC does. xxxp

gonna be kinda hard to "move center" when there's video of this

While speaking today with televangelist Pat Robertson at Robertson’s Regent University, Trump specifically praised Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the two most conservative justices on the Supreme Court. “Justice Thomas doesn’t get enough credit,” Trump said. “He’s a wonderful man, he’s a wonderful guy.”

After criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts as not being conservative enough, and attacking Ted Cruz for promoting his nomination, Trump said he would appoint “pro-life” justices who are “very conservative” and “like Judge Scalia."

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trump-vows-appoint-far-right-supreme-court-justices-clarence-thomas

http://49.media.tumblr.com/227637977a10c41c8904ed1ff442100e/tumblr_o2b65qja4k1r3uv06o1_500.gif

If you need a giant-slayer, Romney's the guy.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/24/politics/mitt-romney-donald-trump-taxes/

(Romney's reemergence is disorienting enough; seeing his name bandied about alongside the word "bombshell," doubly so.)

Golden Gal is Avey. Panda: Natural Selection, Hocus Pocus, Lying in the Grass, Recycling

gonna be kinda hard to "move center" when there's video of this

/While speaking today with televangelist Pat Robertson at Robertson’s Regent University, Trump specifically praised Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the two most conservative justices on the Supreme Court. “Justice Thomas doesn’t get enough credit,” Trump said. “He’s a wonderful man, he’s a wonderful guy.”

After criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts as not being conservative enough, and attacking Ted Cruz for promoting his nomination, Trump said he would appoint “pro-life” justices who are “very conservative” and “like Judge Scalia."/

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trump-vows-appoint-far-right-supreme-court-justices-clarence-thomas🔗

There's so much more damning video of him from the 90s espousing left wing positions. This is nothing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2013/11/08/modern-democrats-would-view-john-f-kennedy-as-a-reaganite-extremist/#26fc9e1c79ab

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 24, 2016 11:28 PM (Yesterday)

this article is total dreck

Stoll lays out Grover Cleveland’s fierce anti-labor views, his advocacy for low deficits and a strong dollar, repealing silver coinage, his antagonism to strong executive action, and belief in free enterprise and individual responsibility. If JFK were here today, he would either have to renounce most of what he stood for or join the Republican party.

i don't worship at the shrine of camelot or anything but that "jfk conservative" thing was debunked over and over again pretty comprehensively when that book came out. kennedy's tax cuts were not similar to reagan's, and using his cold war era speeches to argue that his policies were equivalent to reagan's (let alone bush's) is ridiculous.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2004/01/tax_cuts_in_camelot.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/the_rights_jfk_myth_now_they_claim_he_was_conservative/