Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

amazing that they predicted that people would be drawn to one of America's most famous celebrities. what will this niche group of political scientists unearth next?
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:23 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i’ll be charitable and assume you didn’t actually read the article, because if you read the article and that is what you got out of it, you’re an idiot.

and yes i keep thinking that even if trump loses there are going to be more and more trumps (big or small) to contend with in ensuing decades. people are going to take lessons from his success.

it is odd that Trump is an authoritarian yet Hillary is the one who voted with W on Iraq

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 11:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

precisely, she voted /with/ W.

Yes, very odd. I can't even begin to think of any possible explanation why Trump didn't vote in favor of war with Iraq.

what am i supposed to get from that. they took heavily biased polls and a narrowly defined version of "authoritarian" and slapped them together. wow.

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/12/Donald-Trump-in-Home-Alone-2-20th-Century-Fox-640x480.jpg

this has more to do with people voting for Trump

i know this sounds weird, but i feel like a substantial part of trump's mystique would vanish if someone just ripped that fucking toupée off of his head and left him scrambling for it.

xpost

so you just think that trump is some kind of once-in-a-lifetime leprechaun and his success says nothing about what many americans believe?

I'M AN INCREDIBLE LEPRECHAUN

Not cool

the gist of the article is that there are more Trumps coming, presumably with better "people skills"

It would be interesting to see whether isolationist, protectionist authoritarians could run successfully in the future without the race-baiting element.

In a weak field, idk whether Trump could still have won on a platform of middle-class rage / fear against the 'elite' and general disenchantment with the state of Republican politics by playing up the 'caudillo who's looking out for the average guy' element without aggressively targeting minorities.

Alpenkinderen für Trump!

Basically, Trump has to fail, and be seen to fail.

This is like last time, where the media got very excited about how close the contest was being, then Obama won by miles.

i know this sounds weird, but i feel like a substantial part of trump's mystique would vanish if someone just ripped that fucking toupée off of his head and left him scrambling for it.

that's his real hair! (or at least it's hair which is surgically affixed to his scalp)

booming post from collardio

@jeremyscahill
Trump is the candidate of bigotry and fascism. Hillary is the candidate of Empire.

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like this is too pat; trump is bigotry, facism, and empire, too. i don't read trump's iraq war criticism as principled anti-interventionism. it reads more like "we didnt WIN, if I had been president we woulda won by now". this is the man who advocates killing the family members of terrorists.

Basically, Trump has to fail, and be seen to fail.

Like... Barry Goldwater? The GOP won 5 of the next 6 prez elections.

Trump couldn't manage an Empire.

Obama actually kills the family members of terrorists.

whew! that'll show'em!

'Advocates' makes a difference, albeit not to the families.

We got a long, long email from our building management yesterday concerning the upcoming impact on the city during the RNC, which closed with this little tidbit:

• The rumor that there are “Designated Protest Sites” is not true
o Protestors may set up on “any area outside of the secured perimeter”
o [Secret Service] Agent Rowe indicated that they are not expecting any civil disobedience during the event.

Yeah, good luck with that. There are likely to be a lot of white supremacist Trump supporters coming to the city where police shot Tamir Rice in cold blood. I expect everything will be just peachy.

Question: If Trump is such a horrifying nominee that a significant number of Republican voters go for Hillary, will the term "Clinton Republicans" become a thing the way "Reagan Democrats" is still a thing 35 years later?

Heard a fascinating piece on the radio about the evangelical vote and how actual evangelical leaders are perplexed/frustrated that their flocks are breaking for Trump (who I could have sworn one of them actually called a degenerate). Anyway, he curses, he's rude and crass, he's been married three times and he doesn't know shit about the Bible, to they were confused. I guess according to research it turns out that, surprise, lots of people who identify as evangelical really aren't that religious, and certainly don't go to church. But they do gravitate toward authoritarianism and bigotry. The former obviously doesn't bother evangelical leaders that much, but the latter really seemed to get under their skin as un-Christian.

Well, duh, evangelicals. This seems like another case of Frankenstein's monster coming home. Also, another case where a seemingly solid voting block turns out to be a another repository convenience for racists and inchoate far-right radicals. If anything, this election cycle really underscores the inadequacy (or at least lack of clarity) of our two-part system, more than any in recent memory. Not unlike many countries in Europe, there seems to be four parties in the US: the far left, the moderate left, moderate conservatives and far-right neo-fascists.

Mitt just doesn't seem like the evisceratin' type.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/mitt-romney-eviscerate-donald-trump-phony-fraud-n530877

I've been thinking back to a discussion we had in the wake of Ferguson, in which we talked about the rise of "gear culture" (see Bass Pro Shops) and with it a certain re-scripting of American masculinity, a movement away from self-discipline, inner strength, courage, and coolness-under-pressure, and toward sheer ability to project power, and on the equipment with which one repels or destroys external threats. This culture also devalues rational thought and, in a certain sense, a realist epistemology. If you have enough gear, and you're scared (or pissed off) enough, rational inquiry is a hindrance. (The expansion of the Stand your Ground laws seem to me of a piece with all this. Fuck the duty to retreat. It's not just my home that's my castle: if I'm scared enough of you, and you so much as raise your hands, I have a right to shoot you).

In this way, Trump is the ultimate piece of gear, he's the monster truck of candidates: self-propelled, turbocharged, loud, shiny, and willing to wreak havoc left and right. The prospect of his Presidency, from this point of view, must feel irresistible.

― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you for all of that. Great analysis. I'd argue that one of the central things informing this trend is a hard cultural shift from courage to cowardice and the attendant need to dress that cowardice up in masculine finery.

I don't think Ferguson is ground zero for those tendencies. It goes back further to the election of a black president, which forced sociopolitical tendencies that had waxed and waned for years to coalesce. The VOX article Mordy mentioned makes it clear.

Yeah, I think it goes back at least as long as the survivalist movement became popularized. Constructing your life around constant fear of ?????.

McCarthyism is at the very least an antecedent.

The "real American" has always needed an Other.

booming post from collardio

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, March 3, 2016 10:30 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign

http://i64.tinypic.com/16jh2c3.jpg

collardio's posts are fantastic in this thread.

the gist of the article is that there are more Trumps coming, presumably with better "people skills"

Trump is already Pat Buchanan 2.0.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bernie-sanders-on-phish-one-of-the-great-bands-in-this-country-20160302

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mitt-romney-smash-donald-trump-115853664.html

this seems a little too late, no?

like Trump is just gonna reply with one sentence: "yeah, well you LOST" and his fans will cheer

lol "speech for the ages"

you have to play his game his way

"Trump has a really, really tiny dick, and he cries during Tyler Perry movies"

xpost yeah clickbait headline

s/tiny dick/misshapen dick

Since that really is the level of discourse he's operating on, I just want someone to slip a diuretic in Trump's drink before a debate so that millions of eyes can witness him pissing his pants. Anything that makes him look like a total weak loser baby.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/03/secret-donald-trump-voters-speak-out

quiiiite the rogues gallery here

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

I wish that Vox writer didn't take the weird take of presenting this as some hidden gnosis of obscure folklore or research. Stuff's been around for quite a while.

I think a better introduction is John Dean's _Conservatives without Conscience_, which came out in '06, and is still great if you can stomach the Dubya-era memories. The book is largely based onthe work of Dr Bob Altemeyer, who teaches up in the U of Manitoba and has researched this shit for decades. John Dean's book was so popular Dr Bob wrote his own, and put it online for free: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

It's helpful in figuring out shit like why any president's approval rating never falls below a certain percentage, no matter what happens. Nixon's was still 19% the day he quit & flew away, for example

My in-laws told me about wealthy friends who support Trump and as far as they can surmise the only real reason is because they think he will lower their taxes, i.e. basically the same reason a lot of rich people support Republicans in general.

I know rich Republicans that think he will 'hire the right people.'

The best people.

worked great for w

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/03/secret-donald-trump-voters-speak-out

quiiiite the rogues gallery here

― lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living (Merdeyeux), Thursday, March 3, 2016 10:01 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A lot of these almost sound made up. Like I expect one to be The Transgender Undocumented Immigrant Whose Partner Was Murdered By Donald Trump

People need to be told and told and told again: Trump isn't going to do anything as president that doesn't directly benefit Trump. You might get some of those crumbs, sure, but he doesn't give a fuck about you.

This is the one guy from the Guardian article whose mind I really can't imagine

I’m very concerned about radical Muslims, and liked Donald’s idea to stop all Muslim immigration.

I’m also no supporter of Israel and I’m pro the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement.

I’m concerned that some US citizens have a loyalty to their own group over and above their loyalty to America, and will lobby accordingly.

I’m a patriotic socialist, but my strong-borders patriotism wins over my socialism if I have to choose. As Donald says, we either have a country or we don’t.

I really had no idea there was a "pro-BDS keep-Muslims-out" constituency. What does this mean, that he follows Richard Dawkins on Twitter?

paranoia about 'jewish lobby' controlling the gov't maybe?

that guys answer is so well-studied in its language that i'm pretty sure he's a nazi on the low