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

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."

There really is a Trump-or-Sanders contingent among people who feel left behind after the loss of steady manufacturing jobs. A lot of mixed emotions about unions, but Sanders seems like he actually cares about the working class, and Trump makes grand gestures about shutting down the things they perceive destroyed their jobs.

I know there are a number of people who became strong converts to the necessity of wind energy after a town that had appliance manufacturing lost that company after a merger/outsourcing of labor and a wind energy plant moved in.

idk I'll drift off if I'm yelling into the wind, here

Michelle Goldberg visits CPAC.

Yet after spending three days talking to many conservatives at CPAC, I’ve concluded that the opposition to Trump is not nearly as staunch as we might expect. Most of the Trump opponents I spoke to didn’t see him as a paradigm-shattering threat to the Republic. They simply saw him as their less-preferred presidential candidate. That’s why it’s a mistake to view the GOP as entirely polarized between the Trump and not-Trump wings. Kellyanne Conway, the conservative pollster and president of a pro-Cruz super PAC, told me that Trump is the second choice of most Cruz voters. “The one-two punch of Trump and Cruz has shown that this is a conservative populist party,” she told me.

Of Mitt Romney’s warning about the dangers of Trumpism, Conway says, “If Gov. Romney really thought his message was going to be so resonant among the conservative faithful, he would have delivered it here at CPAC. But then he would have risked being booed. And he would have risked running into a movement that’s fairly unified in its thirst to beat Hillary Clinton in the fall.” In other words, despite the protestations of aghast intellectuals and religious purists, conservatives will eventually fall in line behind Trump if that’s what it takes to win.

I thought Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a central figure in right-wing organizing, might express qualms about Trump. After all, Norquist is an advocate of immigration reform; his wife is a Palestinian Muslim, and he is loathed by Islamophobes for his efforts to bring Muslims into the Republican Party. In the course of a 45-mintue conversation, however, he was far more disdainful of the anti-Trump forces on the right than of Trump himself.

so much for principles

maybe everyone should just look for work in the burgeoning campaign finance sector, tbh

grover norquist should be in jail

it just me or has "thirst" became a much more commonplace term in the last year or so? And showing up where slang is traditionally slower to permeate

like "thirst for knowledge"? maybe coming back into use but if it seems widespread that's prob bc it's old.

thirsty af

Trump's appeal isn't that hard to figure out is it? A lot of people dislike or distrust all politicians. Trump does not have friends inside Washington, he can't be 'bought' or whatever, so people see him as an alternative to say, yet another Bush or Clinton.

thirsté for douché

or rather thirstée

*insert Rubio joke here*

ok, really am shouting into the wind

Trump is speaking to what people perceive as the things that have led to negative changes in their own lives. Whether those are the real forces at work depends on the issue, and he has no ability now or ever to change some of them, but he's saying exactly what people want to hear

- you did nothing wrong
- the world still should be yours
- i'm going to take back what you perceive to be yours

there's no "helping" language, just entitlement. what you had should have been yours forever, even if it's something that no longer exists. take it.

as in the postwar myth of middle-class prosperity ("each generation will be somewhat better off") was implicitly promised through the culture, and that shit is gone.

Silver:

If the Republican nomination were contested under Democratic delegate rules instead, Trump would find it almost impossible to get a majority of delegates, and a floor fight in Cleveland would already be all but inevitable. If every state awarded its delegates winner-take-all, conversely, Trump would be much further ahead, although the bigger swings these rules enable would give his opponents a chance to catch up later on.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-would-be-easy-to-stop-under-democratic-rules/

xxp not only that but he makes everything seem so easy. Mexico's gonna pay for the wall, the military will commit war crimes because I told them to, we're gonna cut taxes by restructuring bad trade agreements, bing bing bing. other candidates won't do it because they're too in bed with XYZ or they're afraid of being politically incorrect. bong, bong, bong.

it's an interest shift in terminology when "takers" used to mean people who absconded with wealth they didn't necessarily earn, and it's now some revenge fantasy of taking what you want from the abstract forces of NAFTA and immigration

it's also a weird disconnect from the new economy. do you know who's buying a lot of pieces of farm equipment that cost $200k each? china, ukraine, a number of other countries that are getting on the large scale agriculture bandwagon

When your life has become a dead end street...I shall build a tall gilded tower at one end, and an enormous wall at the other. From within this enclosure we shall make terrific deals. You will feel good. You already feel better, just picturing this. I know it. My hands are powerful, my tower tall.

hey mh, i think your posts have been super thoughtful and i'm gonna try to remember to direct ppl to them next time there's a condescending dismissal of (non-liberal) bernie/trump middle america working class whites

see i dont trust these polls. number one the media distorts everything anyways. number two Trump is a huge celebrity and when people are polled or interviewed or otherwise engaged by the media on this they have a role to play. this is a roll enforced through Trump rallies and media analysis alike. people in general in America have a heavily distorted view of media figures and the power of the media itself (listen to me lol). any poll where they are asked a question on some big edgy topic is kind of putting them on the spot. i don't think people are this racist or this xenophobic but the media needs them to be for all their Trump articles.

to me he is just saying things he doesnt actually believe in just to get attention. he knows he can't do the things he says bc they are impossible, he is just saying it to get attention.