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

but there's a self-destructive part of me that wants it, like in the 9th inning of a deciding game, slugger vs fireballer, don't throw me a curve you fucker just bring the heat, power vs power, let's see who's got it

Tracer otm (from a safe vantage point)

Since when is Hil Bush's enemy? His ally vs those WMDs!

@MazMHussain
Establishment American politics is a lot like WWF, everyone just pretending to oppose each other onstage.

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2014/September/140909/1D274906737364-today-bush-clinton-140909-01.today-inline-large.jpg

but shove the sanctimony, rushomancy

Xpost Not the act, just the picture. Not unlike the picture of her and Bill with Trump. Context hardly matters, just visceral impact.

the only chance that an incompetent, buffoonish villain like trump would ever conceivably have of accessing the power of the presidency would be in an election against a socialist senator from vermont

I can conceive it if his opponent is the most hated person in the Democratic party.

But kudos on the fearful mental gymnastics, that's Chelsea Clinton's best chance for the 2040 Waterworld crown.

Morbs exerting understandable defense of his sanctimony monopoly there.

hahaha

New Chait traces Trump's love of totalitarianism back decades and calls him and his campaign full out bad for America, no matter his chances of winning or losing.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/14/magazine/14mag-rubio-1/14mag-rubio-1-master675.jpg

Wow. That's like Pulitzer right there.

New Chait traces Trump's love of totalitarianism back decades and calls him and his campaign full out bad for America, no matter his chances of winning or losing.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, March 14, 2016 7:46 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and yet

Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Nomination -- NYMag
nymag.com/.../why-liberals-should-support-a-trump...
New York Magazine
Feb 5, 2016 - By Jonathan Chait

oh. well, he says he was wrong. i guess that's nice

uh if you read the essay the first words are something like "a month ago i said a trump nomination would be best for the country...i no longer believe this to be true"

Obama knows exactly what he is doing

xpost Like I noted earlier, I get a sense what happened in Chicago was some sort of grassroots we're not gonna take it tipping point. The official democratic party can be inexplicably passive or complacent about Trump, but there's no reason regular people, let alone targets of his ire, need to sit back and take his abuse.

xp Let's dispense with that fiction, 'kay.

Driving around the county this weekend I saw hundreds of Marco Rubio signs on lawns and doors, as I would've expected. Not a single Trump or Cruz sign too.

if "fraternizing with the enemy" at a fucking FUNERAL makes a person unfit to rule in the eyes of the people these days, america is completely screwed.

― diana krallice (rushomancy), Monday, March 14, 2016 6:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

somehow i get the feeling that no one is changing his or her vote based on a funeral photo, but please keep up the overwrought HRC defending

agitprop shop goes nuts:

so michelle fields has quit breitbart news because the management are pro-trump and haven't been supportive enough after trump's campaign mgr threw her to the ground (trump himself said she made it up)

ben shapiro, one of the worst little dudes online, quit in solidarity with her. (he hasn't said anything about this directly, but he's received a nonstop flood of antisemitism from trump fans over the past several weeks)

breitbart publishes a snotty response, saying both are betraying saint andrew's widow (?!). here's an archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314115936/http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/03/14/futures-markets-wrap-dow-continues-uncertain-climb/

it was credited to "William Bigelow"; funny when i looked at it this morning it was credited just to "Breitbart News"

and now it's been deleted, with a note saying it was really Joel Pollak who wrote it. and what's with that placeholder url??

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/03/14/futures-markets-wrap-dow-continues-uncertain-climb/

lol mediaite has a further twist:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/see-breitbarts-ridiculously-sarcastic-response-to-ben-shapiros-resignation-that-was-promptly-deleted/

UPDATE — 9:41 a.m. ET: Things just got weird.

POLITICO’s Hadas Gold reports that the author name William Bigelow has been used in the past as a pseudonym for Shapiro’s father David Shapiro for pieces he wrote for the site. So for those of you keeping score at home, the sarcastic and sensitive hit piece aimed at the former editor-at-large was written under the name usually associated with his own father. The younger Shapiro clarified Monday, “Breitbart put this under his byline because they knew I’d have to out him. The fact they would use my father’s pseudonym in order to attack me just exposes how despicable they are.”

damn what a bunch of creeps

And meanwhile, the absolutely odious and despicable Christian fascist V0x D4y is blanketing his Twitter feed* with tweets calling Fields and Shapiro "cuckservatives" and "SJWs." Ben Shapiro an SJW! That's how insane this whole thing has become.

*(When he isn't busy turning his rabid dogs loose on an innocent woman.)

Glad to see that whole narcissism of small differences thing is no longer the sole province of the left.

"no longer"?? people deep in political media have always hated each other

Why was his father using a pseudonym anyway?

can imagine that perhaps the rest of the Orthodox Jewish community might not look fondly on writing for Breitbart

the only chance that an incompetent, buffoonish villain like trump would ever conceivably have of accessing the power of the presidency would be in an election against a socialist senator from vermont

i think if he has a chance at all it's better against clinton

xp His son wrote for them though!

WARNING: SUBSTANCE BELOW

new from Sanders:

The Prize Plan for HIV/AIDS

As president, Bernie will fight to reform the existing patent laws written by and for the pharmaceutical industry to boost their profits and which make medicine so expensive in the United States.

To lower costs for HIV/AIDS drugs everywhere, Bernie has a plan that would establish a multibillion-dollar prize fund to incentivize drug development. This prize fund would replace our country’s broken system that drives drug prices up through government-sanctioned monopolies.

Bernie’s plan would provide virtually universal access to lower-cost life-saving medicines for HIV/AIDS as soon as they are approved for sale.

Under Bernie’s plan, innovation would be rewarded annually from a Prize Fund for HIV/AIDS therapies. The amount of money in the Prize Fund for HIV/AIDS would be more than $3 billion per year.

The Prize Fund would reward medical researchers and developers of medicines based primarily upon the added therapeutic value a new treatment offers and the number of people it benefits. Instead of a system where the market is manipulated to keep out all competition, companies would be rewarded for their innovation with a cash prize for their medical innovations, rather than through the grant of a monopoly. Under Bernie’s plan, drugs would have generic competition immediately after FDA approval.

In other words, this plan would break the link between drug development and the rewards for medical research and development. In doing so, we will reward true innovation, eliminate the market incentive for copycat drugs and get all HIV/AIDS treatments to the people who need them at generic prices.

The Prize Fund proposal would also be much cheaper than the current system, reducing the costs of the drugs to employers, taxpayers and patients by billions of dollars per year.

Bernie would also direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and reduce barriers to the importation of lower-cost drugs from Canada and other countries....

https://berniesanders.com/issues/hiv-and-aids/

xpost i know - maybe it just doesn't bother him as much?

would a prize be commensurate with the billions in profits earned from patents and monopolies? Serious question.

ask Bern

i think if he has a chance at all it's better against clinton

i can't decide who i think will do better against trump. hillary has more unfavorables now but will bernie be electable once they play his pro-castro remarks (or his cancer/orgasms comments) non-stop on commercials? i do think there's a lot of truth to the idea that his popularity is partially bc no one has seriously attacked his weaknesses.

yeah it's hard to call, since hillary's own weaknesses are oriented w such unfortunate perfection toward trump's strengths.

i say unfortunate but i can't imagine trump doesn't know that.

Lately I've been reading a book about Reagan, and the author mentions an Arthur Miller speech from 2001 called "Politics and the Art of Acting". I thought it sheds some interesting light on the appeal of Trump. I guess Trump's background is technically not in acting, though I'm not sure you can draw a line between that and being a reality TV star. Miller notes that one of Reagan's strengths was his ability to not only act but act "sincerely" as evidenced by his frequent blurring of the line between reality and fiction. Like Reagan, I think Trump honestly sees himself as some kind of heroic figure. I could quote the whole thing, but here are a few parts that resonated:

No differently than with actors, the single most important characteristic a politician needs to display is relaxed sincerity. Ronald Reagan disarmed his opponents by never showing the slightest sign of inner conflict about the truth of what he was saying. Simple-minded though his critics found his ideas and remarks, cynical and manipulative as he may have been in actuality, he seemed to believe every word he said; he could tell you that atmospheric pollution came from trees or that ketchup was a vegetable in school lunches, or leave the implication that he had seen action in World War II rather than in a movie he had made or perhaps only seen, and if you didn't believe these things you were still kind of amused by how sincerely he said them... Reagan's tendency to confuse events in films with things that really happened is often seen as intellectual weakness but in reality it was -- unknowingly of course -- a Stanislavskian triumph, the very consummation of the actor's ability to incorporate reality into the fantasy of his role; in Reagan the dividing line between acting and actuality was simply melted, gone. Human beings, as the poet said, cannot bear very much reality, and the art of politics is our best proof...

The mystery of the star performer can only leave the inquiring mind confused, resentful, or blank, something that of course has the greatest political importance. Many Republicans have blamed the press for the attention Bill Clinton continued to get even out of office. Again, what they don't understand is that what a star says and even what he does is only incidental to people's interest in him. When the click of empathic association is made with a leader logic has very little to do with it and virtue even less, at least up to a certain distant point. Obviously, this is not very encouraging news for rational people trying to uplift society by reasoned argument. But then not many of us rational folk are immune to the star's power to rule.

The Presidency in acting terms is a heroic role. It is not one for comedians, sleek lover-types, or second bananas. In a word, to be credible the man who acts as President must hold in himself an element of potential dangerousness. Something similar is required in a real star...

What Clinton projects is his personal interest in the customer, which comes across as a sort of love. There can be no doubt that like all great performers he loves to act, he is most alive when he's on; his love of acting may be his most authentic emotion, the realest thing about him, and as with Reagan there is no dividing line between his performance and himself -- he is his performance...

Clinton, to me, is our Eulenspiegel, the mythical arch prankster of 13th Century Germany, who was a sort of mischievous and loveable folk spirit, half child- half man. Eulenspiegel challenged society with his enviable guile and a charm so irresistible that he could blurt out embarrassing truths about the powerful now and then, earning the gratitude of the ordinary man... Appropriately enough, the word Eulenspiegel is a sort of German joke; it means a mirror put before an owl, and since an owl is blind in daylight it cannot see its own reflection. So that as bright and happy and hilariously unpredictable as he is, Eulenspiegel cannot see himself and so among other things he is dangerous. In other words, a star. Indeed, the most perfect model of both star and political leader is that smiling and implicitly dangerous man who likes you.

http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/arthur-miller-lecture

I can't imagine anyone outside Miami Dade County's dying and rebarbative Cuban American bloc, who wouldn't vote for a Dem anyway, caring about Castro and Sandinistas.

The mystery of the star performer can only leave the inquiring mind confused, resentful, or blank

what's funny about reagan is how consistent the reaction was to him, all through his life: even in high school, some people think he's the nicest, kindest, most heroic person; and others are reduced to paroxysms of frustration by the mention of his name, the kind of despair that comes from years of going "but... but... but what..." to crowds that don't care

Appropriately enough, the word Eulenspiegel is a sort of German joke; it means a mirror put before an owl, and since an owl is blind in daylight it cannot see its own reflection. So that as bright and happy and hilariously unpredictable as he is, Eulenspiegel cannot see himself and so among other things he is dangerous.

i love this!

i'm inclined to believe Conventional Wisdom that pro-castro remarks are a bad sell in america, but i'm also inclined to look w great skepticism on Conventional Wisdom the year the gop nominates a mussolini-tweeting spode

it's not just the pro-castro stuff. it's the vulgar early alternative media stuff too. he's got a lot of material that is probably exploitable to demonstrate how outside the mainstream he is. hopefully it won't matter this cycle but it's def a risk.

Again, what they don't understand is that what a star says and even what he does is only incidental to people's interest in him.

There's this moment at 0;45 when Reagan realizes the crowd's applauding Mondale's zing and his face twists in a brief snarl: it's the resentment of an actor who thinks he's lost the love of the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It0Dtm1gFFQ

mondale pre-clinches it by smiling gamely at "there you go again", even tho it is most likely a smile at the unforced, unknown error

@ggreenwald 1h
NPR warns its employees they're *not allowed* to condemn Trump; NPR host chides Cokie Roberts for doing so

The Rise of Trump Shows the Danger and Sham of Compelled Journalistic “Neutrality”

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/14/the-rise-of-trump-shows-the-danger-and-sham-of-compelled-journalistic-neutrality/

did we ever talk about that recording of him sitting around between segments w joe and mika?

it's not just the pro-castro stuff. it's the vulgar early alternative media stuff too. he's got a lot of material that is probably exploitable to demonstrate how outside the mainstream he is. hopefully it won't matter this cycle but it's def a risk.

Sure. You're right. But the GOP frontrunner is a reality show host who's going to force Mexico to pay for a wall it doesn't want.

@ggreenwald 1h
NPR warns its employees they're *not allowed* to condemn Trump; NPR host chides Cokie Roberts for doing so

I'm off today, so I had a rare chance to check out how execrable the Diane Rehm show is and she came through! She and the Daily Caller guy and Kathleen Parker agreed Sanders and Trump are "exploiting" the "same phenomenon" of discontent.

greenwald bizarrely does not mention that NPR is a publicly/government funded media outlet and probably has obligations to remain neutral on certain electoral topics

Sure. You're right. But the GOP frontrunner is a reality show host who's going to force Mexico to pay for a wall it doesn't want.

but that's part of his appeal - his outrageousness. it's already built into his base of support.

I think you're underestimating how Jewish self-proclaimed socialist from Vermont is part of his appeal and base of support!

that bizarrely sounds like the hounding of Bill Moyers off PBS. xxp