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

Trump is all optics. He himself is created with mirrors iirc

right i guess i just don't buy that evangelicals are horrified by the notion that the woman should be punished for having an illegal abortion performed. they think abortion is murder - why is only one the parties to murder culpable?

it seems to me that the issue is more that it's obvious that trump is a big faker on abortion

today he wouldn't even say that abortion is murder, he had to be prodded to do it

Some evangelicals see the woman as being the victim of manipulation, ie the evil doctors who perform them, the guys who don't "man up" to take care of a child, forcing the woman into it...

All this condescending "we care about YOU too!" bullshit. It's like those billboards that say "every abortion has two victims"

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

i think evangelicals were taken aback because their agenda is that actually punishing women should sound like what's best for women, sort of like "enslaved black people were happier," and trump is not part of that idealogical club, his misogyny is a bit too depraved-european or something.

it's mostly that it was obvious that the town hall meeting was literally the 1st time trump ever had to think (or speak) about what abortion being illegal actually means

i just don't buy that evangelicals are horrified by the notion that the woman should be punished for having an illegal abortion performed

you underestimate the extent of their eagerness to rob women of any and all sexual agency, and be totally patronizing about it in the process:

“No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion,” responded Jeanne Mancini , president of the March for Life. “This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.”

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

― Neanderthal, Saturday, April 2, 2016 12:16 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You probably won't thank me for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj1XVUsXnvI

i think evangelicals were taken aback because their agenda is that actually punishing women should sound like what's best for women, sort of like "enslaved black people were happier," and trump is not part of that idealogical club, his misogyny is a bit too depraved-european or something.

depraved-european? Is this the Drumpf thing again?

Not optimistic about Trump making it through this minefield:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-probably-first-ballot-or-bust-for-donald-trump-at-the-gop-convention/

Delegates are people!

Michael Cohen
‏@speechboy71
As Sanders has ramped up his attacks on Clinton, I've seen many more personal attacks from Clinton backers on Sanders ..

Michael Cohen ‏@speechboy71 1h1 hour ago
Something similar happened in 2008 between Obama & Clinton supporters ... but this year feels nastier and more personal than then

is this guy serious? 2008 was much more brutal iirc

NYT has an article about just how brutal the general election would be for trump. it's hopeless and then some. (barring some catastrophe of course.)

buried in the article is the observation that in polls sanders fares even better against trump (and cruz) than clinton. i assume this is partly simply because low name recognition equals low negatives. i wonder how good of a predictor those polls are in re. sanders. i'd like to think they are sound....

the NYT notes among other things that if trump amps up his politics-of-resentment stuff to consolidate his white, blue-collar male votes he'll probably lose as many votes (among better-educated suburbanites) as he would gain. and at this point there's pretty much no chance he'll make inroads among minorities and (probably) women. so he's fucked.

which to my mind means we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect a real progressive to the white house; we don't have to worry as much about that elusive and often dubious quality "electability". but i understand that other folks don't see it that way.

(the little devil in my head is telling me that should sanders become president, it would galvanize the Right like nothing else and not only would he be a one-term president, but the house/senate elections in 2018 would swing way to the GOP's favor. sort of like 2010 in overdrive. but who knows. i'm not good at playing chess, either.)

buried in the article is the observation that in polls sanders fares even better against trump (and cruz) than clinton.

This isn't really a secret, it's been that way for a while. The normal counterargument is that Clinton is at her floor, so can only go up; Sanders - and Trump - are at their ceilings, so can only go down.

which to my mind means we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect a real progressive to the white house; we don't have to worry as much about that elusive and often dubious quality "electability". but i understand that other folks don't see it that way.

Yes, it's "Look, the GOP is going to nominate a complete maniac! Time to capitalize on that and get who we really want" vs. "Look, the GOP is going to nominate a complete maniac! Now is not the time for a utopian experiment! The stakes are too high!"

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

That song is linked on an ILM thread somewhere, I should look for it because it was super lolsy and horrifying

Lol I should have just kept reading the thread

Also unless a whole bunch of people to the left of the current makeup of Congress are also elected this year, electing Sanders is going to give us about the same as what we will get from electing Clinton, so I hope everyone putting forward the "here's the chance to get what we want!" are pushing the down-ticket candidates who will make Sanders' platform achievable.

otm, though the not starting wars thing would be a nice consolation prize too

which to my mind means we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect a real progressive to the white house; we don't have to worry as much about that elusive and often dubious quality "electability". but i understand that other folks don't see it that way.

(the little devil in my head is telling me that should sanders become president, it would galvanize the Right like nothing else and not only would he be a one-term president, but the house/senate elections in 2018 would swing way to the GOP's favor. sort of like 2010 in overdrive. but who knows. i'm not good at playing chess, either.)

I think there's also good reason to believe that sanders might achieve fewer progressive goals as president than clinton would, even (or maybe especially) with a democratic congress

yeah, i think a sanders executive branch would function a little differently than a clinton executive branch.

i can't do much about downticket races save for the senate one (feingold vs. johnson)--i'll be going door to door for feingold in a few weeks (after the primary). my congressional district is essentially uncontested, as are the others near here. i'll put in some time and money to support some dem candidates in the few state senate districts that are for grabs, in the hopes that someday they can redistrict in a way that doesn't nearly guarantee uncontested congressional districts. but that day is probably a decade or more off.

anyway.

sanders has a pretty clear record of voting for major democratic bills, even after a bit of needling and threats, does he not? not sure i buy the theory that he'll be some purist who is gonna be free tuition or bust or something xp

xpost

say more iatee. why do you think that?

i mean, xxpost!

The most stupid thing my youth group pastor ever played for us was a sad ballad sung from the perspective of a recently aborted fetus

this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aiYg0BOsOs

xpost

say more iatee. why do you think that?

I think he'd be bad at making the types of compromises you need to make to get major legislation passed. he's shown little evidence he understands why much of the country disagrees with any part of his platform. and I don't think his administration would deal with failure well.

I think there's also good reason to believe that sanders might achieve fewer progressive goals as president than clinton would, even (or maybe especially) with a democratic congress

she seems like she might be better at convincing more moderate recalcitrant reps to sign onto legislation like obama had to end up doing passing ACA or give more cover to dems in moderate districts just by virtue of not seeming like the furthest left wing of the party. idk obv just speculating. presumably she has better working relationships with a lot of these legislators in the party having raised funds for them, been involved on some level in their careers, and maybe even republicans - i remember stories during her time in the senate about how she had better than usual working relationships w/ republicans. otoh like obama she'll likely be quicker to dilute progressive legislation in the hope of facilitating compromise.

Her Senate tenure looks like Henry Clay's tenure at this point though.

i love krugman [...]

― k3vin k., Friday, April 1, 2016 5:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Rofl

i love krugman -- man unrelated to paul krugman, who also somehow does not have a gun pointed at his head by paul krugman

That latest Krug column is vile btw, even by his bootlicking standards

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/sorry-bernie-bros-your-candidate-just-doesnt-have--4201

she seems like she might be better at convincing more moderate recalcitrant reps to sign onto legislation like obama had to end up doing passing ACA

wait wait wait wait. what?

On December 23, the Senate voted 60–39 to end debate on the bill: a cloture vote to end the filibuster. The bill then passed, also 60–39, on December 24, 2009, with all Democrats and two independents voting for it, and all Republicans against (except Jim Bunning, who did not vote).[119] (...) The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it.[135] The next day, Republicans introduced legislation to repeal the bill.[136] Obama signed the ACA into law on March 23, 2010.[137]

oh wait okay. you meant "reps" as in "representatives" so that could mean curmudgeonly conservative dems. okay, that makes mor sense.

yes sorry for easily avoidable ambiguity

Trying to clean up the mess everywhere.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/02/politics/donald-trump-heidi-cruz-tweet/index.html

Feels like everything's just come to a complete stop. The timing of all this stuff, during a long break between primaries, probably hurts as much as anything else.

i think that may be the first time i (or anyone) has heard him apologize.

daaaamn

http://predictwise.com/politics/2016-president-republican-nomination

I mean this doesn't really mean shit since we ain't had a primary in over a week and his supporters aren't likely to throw in the towel between now and the convention as he's still likely to be leading but am really interested in seeing how Wisconsin goes on Tuesday. if he gets 6 or less delegates as speculated, that will be huge because it will cement the likelihood of a contested convention given that even him winning 20 delegates there wouldn't have him on track. Trump's staff already minimizing expectations ("we knew we'd lose in Wisconsin").

tbh I'm hoping for pure circus spectacle at the RNC.

I don't think his administration would deal with failure well.

HRC would define success as "whatever happens"

also "i came, i saw, they died"
she is going to be the biggest Dem militarist since LBJ

Lol, Sanders apparently just stole the election in Nevada.

If Trump can get Dowd to stop shit-talking Hillary Clinton for even two sentences, he's in real trouble.

Chris Wallace just had Trump on. He's really digging in on his nonsensical explanation for the abortion comments: "It was a hypothetical, I was answering a hypothetical." What exactly is the difference between answering a hypothetical and expressing your actual thoughts?

I'm glad about one thing. I thought he might finally have been forced into coming across vaguely contrite and human. Nope, still the same. He's released Ted Cruz from his pledge to support Trump because he realizes it causes Cruz all sorts of stress, and (paraphrase) "Ted doesn't handle stress well. Have you seen him? He's a basket case."

Lol, Sanders apparently just stole the election in Nevada.

― Frederik B,

what's your problem, man?

yea stop harshing our mellow

yeah "stole" seems like not the right verb...? nevada awards its delegates in several phases and it seems sanders's people turned out more for this one, which was never obligated to match the popular-vote results in the state. no delegates were taken away from clinton. you could argue that nevada awards its delegates in a dumb and loopy way, but the thing is playing out according to the rules as far as i can tell?

relax guys, i'm sure he wasn't trying to insinuate bernie did anything underhanded. sheesh.

wait is freddy b. a mordy sock

Hilarious watching Kasich try to answer basically the same questions about abortion from Stephanopoulos this morning. He simply wouldn't answer them: "Send it back to the states, send it back to the states, send it back to the states." Okay, but if you think abortion is murder, shouldn't there be punishment for the woman or the doctor? "Send it back to the states--that's all I'm going to say." Okay, you're a governor--if it gets send back to Ohio, what will you do? "Huggleglumpf--and that's all I'm going to say right now."