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

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.

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

The highest-rated season of The Apprentice was its first season, where it averaged 20 million viewers. The highest-rated season of Celebrity Apprentice was its first, where it averaged 11 million viewers, making it the 48th-most watched show of its season. The ratings for both shows plunged steadily every season since. I don't think you know fuck-all about what "the American people" are doing.

Whether or not Trump has any actual plans or ability to take action when in office, a lot of his rhetoric speaks to people in small towns, areas that are nearly depopulated or increasingly populated by recent immigrants who work factory jobs (non-union, tending to be more unskilled labor than machinists) that pay very little.

The racist narrative is convenient but mostly a scapegoat -- making america "great" to many of these people would be having jobs in their communities that pay a reasonable wage. They don't want to be plucking chickens, but they resent the immigrants in their community who do so.

There are a myriad of reasons smaller towns have been hit by this kind of blight. The long-term trend toward city living, NAFTA and other trade deals making it attractive for companies to relocate, unions that were slow to adapt to lean manufacturing processes, mechanization of farm labor leading to fewer jobs and more expensive equipment that small farmers wouldn't own.

It's a haughty position to brush away these concerns, to paint these people as individuals who were left behind by the new economy, people who are just unable to adapt.

lol tho at the implication that fascism appeals to students of Italian ww2 era fascism

The absence of critical thinking education in American public schools + cable 'news' organizations that spoonfeed a completely skewed vision of an America going down the toilet + loudmouthed pseudo-celebrity millionaire who's like every dad and boss that people were afraid to cross all rolled up in one person = the baffling success of Trump's campaign.

That really goes for the great manufacturing cities of the country, too. We like to paint a picture of some sort of post-industrialist rapture where small towns and defunct manufacturing cities look like the rapture hit, but there are people still there, and many people who relocated are doing worse off than they were before.

calling that kind of stuff a policy position feels like a misapplication of the term - it's more like a hyperbolic challenge. There's no way a wall will get built. There's no way Mexico will pay for it. There's no way a police force is going to round up 11 million people and put them on the other side of that wall. And would this theoretical wall keep out whatever illegal immigrants Trump Industries feels it needs to hire? It's just so incoherent and divorced from reality it seems like a miscategorization to consider it as akin to a proposal to restructure the tax code.

xxp

also worth mentioning the number of people who saw poor career prospects, joined the armed forces, and then came back to find poor support structures for their post-military lives

Old Lunch otm

that's a bit simplistic

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

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 2:20 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Donald Trump is way more famous than that. up there with President Michael Jackson or President E.T.

nostaglia is a powerful emotion and emotions are key to this election. people are overlooking this.

Trump's racism is nothing new to a party long used to demonizing minorities for political gain. i don't see the fascination in that. it's on its way out imo.

it's true, I have very fond memories of President E.T.

up there with President Michael Jackson or President E.T.

haha um no

the peepul beleeve in teevee

it really is pro wrestling. DT catcalling "go home to mommy" to cheering as protestors are being hauled out -- well, it's just as bellicose and unfunny as all that rasslin' shit that was mystifyingly 'cool' in the '80s/90s.

fear has always been a Republican selling point

fear of Republicans has always been the Democrat selling point

said Palpatine to Anakin

oceania has always been at war with eurasia, i mean, eastasia

basically this is what every Trump rally looks like to me now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoPpw7DNzCY

90s nostalgia. don't deny it. both sides are playing that card. even Bernie Sanders has the Seinfeld thing.

i remember Town Halls during Obamacare, when lunatics were bringing guns to it and "making a stance". he should be personally held responsible for any violence that occurs at his rallies. this goes for anyone.

even Bernie Sanders has the Seinfeld thing.

this is a very rude way to refer to Michael Richards

some people are into trump because he's a racist, some because (as frank's piece discusses) he seems more sympathetic blue-collar workers than the other candidates, and also because he's a famous guy whose campaign truly does resemble pro wrestling/reality tv. all three of those appeal to different people. sometimes more than one appeals, and for some people it's all three. it's not just one thing. obv point but a lot of people seem to want to simplify things by saying it's entirely about racism, or it's entirely about celebrity.

hahaha

xp

roflz

Mike Murphy, regular GOP election/consultant type and the guy behind Jeb's Right to Rise PAC, with zero fucks and zero regrets:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-mike-murphy-20160308-story.html

Murphy, who also writes screenplays in an office on Paramount's Hollywood lot, said he earned in the mid-six figures for his work with Right to Rise. He dismissed the criticism, saying it comes from unnamed sources and rivals.

"The truth is I don't care. There's nothing lower in my book than second-guessing," he said in an interview. "There are a lot of people in the cheap seats with a lot of opinions. What have they done?"...

A staff member at Right to Rise declined to say how much money is left but indicated that donors will get a prorated refund.

After a grueling 14-month campaign that began with great optimism and ended in dismal defeat, Murphy says he plans to spend time with his family. He and his wife, entertainment executive Tiffany Daniel — who is a Democrat — live with their 2-year-old daughter in a $2.6-million Hancock Park home.

Then, he says, he'll return to his Hollywood pursuits. His resume includes a short stint as a writer-producer for Dennis Miller and a script about politics titled "Hacks," which was bought by HBO but never greenlighted. He says he already has a deal with a cable network."