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

the entire reason Trump had momentum to begin with is that he policed the identity of America's most powerful black person

^^^

We really need more intrepid reporters setting rhetorical traps for Trump. He's proven so suggestible and adept at taking the bait thus far, exposing the void where a system of values would lie in a functioning human being. Ask him questions in such a way that it steers him towards voicing a hugely-unpopular and perhaps even broadly offensive position that is in no way reflective of his having given any real thought to the issue. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" as political tool. I like it! Can we get this on the air by Tuesday?

Old Lunch otm. In the abortion conversation, Matthews deserves some credit for continuing to press Trump, but he (Matthews) also comes off as somewhat rambly and disorganized. He gives some cover to Trumpoids who say it was a baiting question and that it needs to be heard in context. Even so T. needed to release several flailing and contradictory clarifications, and he is still on the defensive. Which is great.

Slightly better planning and a more laserlike focus might get some truly un-walk-backable stuff out of Trump. Ask him about affirmative action. Ask him about voter ID. Ask him about pay equity. Let the fun commence.

All this said, it's not primarily the media's job to torpedo Trump's candidacy. I continue to believe that Trump is his own worst enemy, and that if permitted enough rope he will destroy his own chances just by being himself.

x-post re Clinton and Sanders on Wall Street and possible influence or not of her speeches

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/05/3736113/bernie-sanders-wall-street-plan/

How Sanders and Clinton differ with their Wall Street related plans (as of January)

Some agreement, but differences on Glass-Steagall, what a financial transaction tax should cover, and other things

video game fascism, who could have predicted...

Just to sidestep for a moment the vitally important conversation about Hillary Clinton's speeches - do you Sanders supporters really not see that your belief that he'd do better nationally than Clinton is the exact mirror image of right-wing nutjobs' belief that "if we just nominate a True Conservative, the country will be ours!" Sanders is fucking doomed, and it's not the word "socialist" that kills him, it's the word "revolution." People don't want a revolution. They want to be left the fuck alone. That's why voter turnout is what it is. Clinton's presidency promises to be low-impact for the average person, and she's the only candidate of whom that's true. Trump, Cruz, and Sanders all promise to make people's lives more complex, and bring trouble, if they win. Only maniacs vote for politicians who are going to require them, the voters, to actually do something or change their own lives in a significant way. And the vast majority of Americans are not maniacs - they're people with other shit on their minds, who want to think seriously about politics for about a month, once every four years.

tbf current polling does suggest that he'd be competitive nationally tho who knows how that looks when we get to october

on, eh, clinton's speeches (sorry), just ftr, for me they represent a massive problem in where she's coming from - even if there's no formal quid pro quo it tells you tons about where she feels comfortable and who she thinks is important. but there was nothing actually illegal about them as far as anybody can tell.

it's similar to how carrying a heavy jug of your own excrement and putting it up the lectern next to the microphone as you give a speech is not illegal. "No, Victoria, I will not move this jug of excrement down from the lectern, and I do not care if it is blocking your vision. That is YOUR problem, Victoria, that is YOUR problem, not mine!"

- John Oliver

top man - which of ''you sanders supporters'' are you politely addressing? we try to all keep on the same page, you know, but differences of opinion slip through which is why our hive mind has resolved that we should continue to post under separate screen names, at least through the current phase of the campaign. but it does make it tricky to answer blanket responses to what may in fact be phantom strawmen. i for one am comfortable with the idea that sanders's current hypothetical general numbers would crash hard once he's subjected to a full-bore GOP smear campaign. the only caveats are that some of that loss might be canceled out by clinton's preexisting high negatives, and the enormous disadvantages that any of the toxic GOP candidates has going in re: electoral map, etc. etc.

"Clinton's presidency promises to be low-impact for the average person, and she's the only candidate of whom that's true."

I think there may be are more "average" people who are looking for more significant changes than you think, Phil (congratulations on speaking for all the normals though).

yeah, i mean the whole basis of sanders's campaign, and in a different way trump's, is that lots of 'regular people' feel like the status quo is actively screwing them over and they are seeking restitution. not saying that that by itself is an election-winning coalition but it's an odd year to lean hard on people's fundamental complacency and preference for business-as-usual.

do you Sanders supporters really not see that your belief that he'd do better nationally than Clinton is the exact mirror image of right-wing nutjobs' belief that "if we just nominate a True Conservative, the country will be ours!"

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Monday, April 4, 2016 1:46 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you say so

xp also an odd century.

Sanders v. Trump
RCP Average 3/16-4/2 53.4 37.4 Sanders +16.0

Clinton v. Trump
RCP Average 3/16-4/2 49.4 38.6 Clinton + 10.8

(it's been holding steady like this for a long time now)

vs. Kasich, currently

Sanders: +1.3
Clinton: -6.3

And vs. Cruz

Sanders +9.8
Clinton +3.1

i think he's vulnerable on the soviet / communism / bread lines stuff

like i've never seen this clip before today and i've been following the election closely. there's likely a lot of usable stuff out there like this that hillary has not made a part of her campaign in any way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBjjP8WSbc

A fair point.

Bernie Sanders praising bread lines and food rationing... as preferable to widespread starvation.

and he only went on his honeymoon to the USSR bc they had a sister-city program. if you think americans respond well to context + nuance then you'll disagree that these things could have an effect. i'm not as optimistic about polity.

(it's been holding steady like this for a long time now)

― Hadrian VIII, Monday, April 4, 2016 2:17 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

head to head polls are meaningless this far out

on the subject of someone dying before november

One explanation for all this raggedness is that the Trump team is simply burned out. People who know Trump say they’ve never seen him so tired. Several months ago, he began wearing a bulletproof vest, two sources close to the campaign told me, which has added to his discomfort on the stump, leaving him sweaty and spent after events. And given that his unfavorables among women already are at ruinous levels (a CNN poll last month found that 73 percent of registered female voters held a negative view of Trump), his ill-advised comments about punishing abortion-seekers seem like they might have been a function of sheer exhaustion as well.

sweaty and spent

Gah, erotic Trump campaign fic should not be permitted into the national conversation, even under Rule 34.

http://i.imgur.com/cGX1Spn.jpg

it's similar to how carrying a heavy jug of your own excrement and putting it up the lectern next to the microphone as you give a speech is not illegal. "No, Victoria, I will not move this jug of excrement down from the lectern, and I do not care if it is blocking your vision. That is YOUR problem, Victoria, that is YOUR problem, not mine!"

I legit can't tell if this is real Oliver or parody, and I say that as someone who generally likes him (though now I'm starting to reconsider).

Bernie Sanders praising bread lines and food rationing... as preferable to widespread starvation.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), 4. april 2016 20:32 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's... A pretty bad excuse... I don't think he's talking about Ethiopia or whereever.

uh are you at all familiar with how many people died of famine in the Soviet Union? more than Ethiopia, for sure.

Well, yeah, but that makes his statement worse.

What's the full context though?

i don't really agree w/ any of top man's "you sanders supporters" post. most successful candidates run on a platform of challenging the status quo to at least some degree, and obama won in 2008 by promising the exact opposite of what you're talking about. voter turnout isn't low because ppl don't want stuff from their government -- weed out the tea partiers, and most americans want a lot of stuff from their government! i also think that the majority of ppl who don't vote are probably never going to vote, and the outcome of the election doesn't depend on them.

Well, yeah, but that makes his statement worse.
--Frederik B

Yeah why didn't Bernie save all the people.

Arguably the famine and the bread lines were both symptomatic of the same forced collectivization of agriculture. Breadlines are obviously preferable to starving to death but I wasn't trying to gotcha Bernie. I was more pointing out that most of the material the right wing will use to smear him haven't even shown up in the discourse yet (partially bc I think the right would prefer him to Hillary and are saving their material for later).

I legit can't tell if this is real Oliver or parody, and I say that as someone who generally likes him (though now I'm starting to reconsider).

lol, it's parody. i still tune in occasionally but once you start noticing his metaphor + short conversation with a fake person thing, it's incredibly annoying

The parody could have been more accurate if you had John yelling at Victoria a little longer. It ended too comfortably.

WATCH: John Oliver absolutely destroys Victoria in an epic rant that originally had something to do with the idea of holding leaders to a higher standard

yeah Oliver's one note schtick gets pretty grating

There's a big Bernie Sanders billboard in my neighborhood now. Such a waste of money and resources.

tbf, john oliver doesn't dig it either
http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/john-oliver-last-week-tonight-c-v-r.html

It’s a comedy show. We can’t really control how people receive it. Just like you can’t control the ludicrous packaging placed on the pieces the next day online, when people write things like “John Oliver takes a sword to the very heart of chicken farming.” “He throws a hand grenade at Congress.” That response never ceases to slightly depress me. “He takes a baseball bat and pounds to death the concept of chicken farming.” Wow, you just oversold what that piece was! It’s really annoying.

Trump's campaign surely never recovered from his insightful takedown!

(Though to be honest, I found his breakdown of the costs and logistics of the border wall refreshing... why won't people press Trump further to go into any detail about how his plans will actually work?)

bc the wall is just a metaphor

The wall is you and me, and we're fabulous.

that reminds me that i was having a bad dream last night where sea levels were overtaking miami and other major cities but we had a giant 40 foot wall between the u.s. and mexico

kinda lovin this photo

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/04/04/National-Politics/Images/BotsfordTRUMP160403WI43141459736411.jpg

that reminds me that i was having a bad dream last night where sea levels were overtaking miami and other major cities but we had a giant 40 foot wall between the u.s. and mexico

― Karl Malone, Monday, April 4, 2016 3:49 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sounds like a good dream to me #TRUMP2016

this exists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bERtaqXtBpI

If Trump is the most fit person ever, says his GI specialist or derm or whomever, imagine how hard police and soldiers have it with their bulletproof vests.

not the most fit person ever, just "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

so, you know, not completely exaggerated or anything