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

has anyone read Caro's LBJ bio(s)? considered it, but i'm not sure i want to bite that off right now

Yes. They're compulsive reads – you won't stop.

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Washington Post says Clinton strategy to get attention regarding local issues from local media in each state has helped her, as compared to Bernie's national-focused economic message

Hillary Clinton made the race in Michigan all about the lead in Flint’s water, her opposition to the state’s controversial emergency manager law and her opponent’s vote against a bailout for the auto industry.

The crisis in Flint had been going on for some time before the former secretary of state sent emissaries to visit, secured the endorsement of the city’s mayor and then insisted on having a debate in the city, 70 miles northwest of Detroit.

It is part of a pattern for Clinton. She’s approached every primary more like it was a Senate race than a presidential election by identifying a local issue that would play to her advantage and then championing it.

Clinton is also overwhelmingly favored to win today’s Democratic primary in Mississippi, where she’s been speaking extensively about the levels of lead in Jackson’s water. The city is predominantly African American, and Jackson’s mayor cited her attentiveness to the issue as the reason he chose to endorse her.

It’s not just infrastructure. Clinton has campaigned against voter ID laws in Alabama and Missouri, a religious freedom bill in Arkansas, as well as right to work legislation in Illinois, Missouri and West Virginia. She supported a settlement that New Orleans's Democratic mayor negotiated with FEMA and lauded a student loan refinancing program unveiled by Minnesota's Democratic governor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/03/08/daily-202-hillary-clinton-is-winning-with-a-hyper-local-strategy/56de2040981b92a22d7612d7/

I lol'd

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/trump-tweets-the-classics#.blxROo9D1

Clinton at non-rally appearances is even more micro-targeted. I'm sure there's a personal component but her team is very good at identifying exactly who is in the room and what their actual concerns are, or at least that was the case when I saw her speak eight years ago in a room with a few hundred people.

interesting article, and this is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Clinton when she faces Trump. What are the chances that she's going to denounce NAFTA and similar deals? What kind of plan does she have to keep more jobs in the US?
― Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 9:43 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was just thinking while drivig to work that trump is gonna come at hillary from the left /and/ the right. whatever she has to do to defeat him, it won’t be drawn from the usual playbook. i imagine it will have to mostly be about credibility, and his lack of it. which will make the race instantly more personal than any we have seen in our lifetimes.

HRC and Sanders were at FOX's town hall last night! Weird watching Brett Baier interview Dems.

feel like as long as she isn't campaigning in michigan/rustbelt and against sanders hillary will revert back to free trade is good

btw i need to change the radio station on my alarm clock (currently one of the NPR affiliates). i woke up today to a news story about mass killings in south sudan which segued into a discussion of the failures of peacekeeping forces in Africa which segued into how american muslims were fearful of donald trump's rise. i was only 15 minutes into the day and already in despair.

try bbc radio 4, it's even more despair but with a dry wit

i stopped turning on NPR when my kids were in the car bc every time i did the first words out of the radio were "X civilians in Y were killed this morning"

as long as it's not those damned canadians the local NPR affiliate has on in the late evening

caro's lbj bio is essential reading. some people worry about whether the next "game of thrones" will come out before martin dies, and i'm just worried that caro won't be able to finish his lbj bio before he dies. :(

stay woke, am

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support?CMP=share_btn_fb

thomas frank is mostly OTM but... i think he fails to acknowledge the SYNERGY b/t trump's populist protectionism and racism/xenophobia. it makes total sense that people soured on "free trade" would also be suspicious of outsiders "taking their jobs" and a whole host of other bigoted canards.

i am literally woke(n up)

i mean i like to keep up w/ the news but maybe after i've taken a shower.

they made that in sweden

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 6:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cåndy Crøsh

― van damme death warrant (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 6:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kinda disappointed to see this only a few posts after I told you there's no "ø" letter in Swedish, I expected better of ILX.

ABC/WaPo poll now has It's Pat only 9 points behind Yelling Yam among Repubs nationally

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/poll-trump-decline-220415

surprised cruz's message is resonating at all

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why
Thomas Frank
When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message about free trade and its victimsTHEY SEEN HIM ON THE TV

but yes let's continue with this "why would Americans chose a huge famous celebrity?" pose and pretend people give a crap about issues

charting Trump's "ideology" is a fool's game. Baffled that anyone think's prognosticating about what "issues" he would attack Hillary on has any value - issues are totally beside the point with Trump, it will be all bluster and insults and totally incoherent ideologically.

Adam are you absolutely certain that Trump's supporters are all fans of The Apprentice

surprised cruz's message is resonating at all

― Treeship, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 11:47 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think cruz's message at this point is "i'm a conservative, and i'm not trump"

we're seeing an inverse of the 2012 primary cycle when various "non-romneys" rose and fell. trump has effectively consolidated much of what had been the non-romney" vote and now we see various "establishment" candidates (or in cruz's case, marginally more establishment) rising and falling in their attempts to defeat trump.

may not all be fans of the Apprentice, but i'd guess 98% of them are big fans of his racism

that must have been on the Racism Channel, i missed it

i think the idea that trump's supporters are just morons drawn to a celebrity is absolutely untrue. he is playing to their resentments, providing the obvious scapegoats for their problems (minorities, immigrants), and -- as one article i read pointed out -- promising people the most taboo freedom: the freedom to hate. we ignore this at our own risk imo

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why
Thomas Frank
When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message about free trade and its victimsTHEY SEEN HIM ON THE TV

Isn't it crazy how everyone but you is stupid and easily led?

may not all be fans of the Apprentice, but i'd guess 98% of them are big fans of his racism

hey here's an article you should read http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support

the elite meets on private island, vows to do something

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aei-world-forum-donald-trump_us_56ddbd38e4b0ffe6f8ea125d

i always wanted a stucco mansion like that

but yes let's continue with this "why would Americans chose a huge famous celebrity?" pose and pretend people give a crap about issues

and the left wonders why it can't reach the disenfranchised working class

Democratic Rep. John Delaney, who represents Maryland.

wtf why was this guy there

the left wonders why it can't reach the disenfranchised working class

because it isn't racist enough?

Karl Rove shared focus group findings that give hope to the GOP establishment.

http://i.imgur.com/3j3Bk7K.jpg

hey here's an article you should read http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support

yeah it can be both. also, where was all this conservative white dude handwringing about free trade in 2012?

sorry to be glib, guys. i'm a wite dude from MS/ TN. i know lots of trump fans. i'm very aware of how NAFTA et al has hurt their prospects. i also know how comfortable they are with entitlements - and even handouts - themselves, as long as no one they deem Other is getting in on the action.

Kinda disappointed to see this only a few posts after I told you there's no "ø" letter in Swedish, I expected better of ILX.

i know, i know. i hesitated for this reason. but it just looked so perfect there.

to be blunt, the democratic party establishments in the southern states are a) very strongly black, b) not particularly left wing and c) highly dependent on the national party for their continued strength -- these are the weakest pieces of the whole party. they want a winner and they want to survive, it's not really a 'revolutionary moment' for them

― goole, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 11:53 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. there's this...problematic assumption among a lot of lefties that because african-americans vote so heavily democratic, it must follow that they are also the most liberal. this is not the case

i posted that charles m blow piece a couple of weeks ago, but jamelle bouie had explored this a little too, both on his Twitter timeline about a week ago (if you care to look) as well as in this piece he wrote a few months ago

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/hillary_clinton_s_ties_to_black_democrats_will_save_her_campaign_from_bernie.html

(the responses on his timeline from bernie fans was...predictably unfortunate)

Adam are you absolutely certain that Trump's supporters are all fans of The Apprentice

― micro brewbio (crüt), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 12:58 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the American people aren't sitting home reading up on Mussolini, they are watching the Apprentice.

he is a huge star, a famous movie guy. the only other person running as world famous as him is Hillary Clinton. Trump was in Home Alone 2. he was in an episode of The Jeffersons. he was in revered 90s nostalgia films "The Little Rascals" and "Home Alone 2" and TV shows "The Nanny" and "Spin City". plus many other appearances in films and tv through the years. always as himself, always building this celebrity brand.

the polls that article refer to state that 53% of people didn't want to vote for anyone. so what do we have left: the millions of people who grew up w this guy on their TV being a big important American icon. somehow all these articles keep coming out that talk about polls and studies and theories and authoritarianism and nobody mentions a TV.

same thing for the democrats via Hillary more or less

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0874339/

that's a bit simplistic

I mean, why aren't we living under President Fred Thompson at the moment then

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. it hasn't hurt obviously. but i really don't think it makes sense at all. would his very excited supporters be just as excited if he was just as famous from his appearances in home alone 2, but gave long, dry, mumbling speeches about the tax code, or about the urgent need for the workers to seize the means of production and eliminate the military?

like, stopping the clock right before trump actually started giving speeches and campaigning and assuming everything before that is the most important stuff for explaining his popularity seems...weird? also because part of that celebrity period overlaps with his birther icon period.

yeah his celebrity obviously helps him but its how he's deployed it and the persona he projects that really matter

It's definitely a mix of reasons. Not one thing or another.

I don't think his specific policy positions matter at all, it's the larger frame of representing aggrieved white people that matters most

it's true though that Clinton's appearance on the 2008 Ellen Page/Wilco episode of Saturday Night Live is the lynchpin (if you will) holding her campaign together

Lotsa good bits in Jeb Lund's CPAC round-up

Hannity's role at CPAC is playing Big Man On Campus for people with stud athlete expectations radically ratcheted downward by attendance at places like Hillsdale College and Liberty University. He throws footballs out into the crowd, his small face on his Rob Liefeld body squinching with effort at huckin' the pigskin toward convention nerds. He constantly fishes for yuk-yuks with an all-time shitty Bill Clinton impression, with less of a resemblance to its inspiration than Ted Cruz's Simpsons voices.

(At one point, he tried it during a Q&A with John Kasich, saying, "Gov. Kasich, there's some really hot girls over there if you wanna go see 'em later... That's my Bill Clinton imitation, in case you didn't get it." It took Kasich a second. "I wondered," he said, looking at the audience. "I thought Hannity had lost his mind.")

[....]

This isn't the way CPAC is supposed to work. Discounts are given to college Republican activists to flood the event with 18- to 22-year-olds for the same reason that the upper limit on the draft age is usually 25: It's really easy to get hormonal dudes unaware of their own mortality rabidly amped up in peer-group settings, no matter what lethally insane shit the guy on the stage is saying. It's a lot harder to get a room of 30-year-olds to rah-rah about never having guaranteed insurance or having to kick in doors in Ramadi

Οὖτις, really? Like, even the wall? The policy positions, as vague as some of them are, are consistent with the persona and at the very least they reinforce it.