I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

re: next thread title, please wait to see whether tonight's VP debate generates a memorable catchphrase, thx.

Personally I'm rooting for either "feel the Pence" or a gif-tastic meme of Shatner screaming "KAAAAAIIINE!!!!"

wow, Trump's chances are down to a kicker missing a 42 yarder now

Gary Johnson defends stupidity:

“Talking about a foreign leader I respect, I have a hard time with that one,” Johnson told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell. “That’s just who I am. And now I’m going to have to pick out a world leader and there’s going to be something wrong with them. And now I’m going to have to defend them! Well, maybe I think too much.”

“You are running to be commander-in-chief,” Mitchell reminded the candidate.

“Yeah, and you know what?” Johnson trumpeted back. “The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader or a geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way!”

seeing friends and ilxors get involved in protests, marches, and community organizations has made me pay much more attention to local politics and has made me be more outspoken on key issues

I might leave some of the sections empty on my election form, but now I do it with purpose

I guess my stance is the opposite of Gary's, there

when it comes to clinton vs trump, the number people are going to remember - the only 'message' that gets both sent and received - will be the margin by which clinton beats trump.

Bush barely won in 2004 and he claimed he had a "mandate" and the press acted as if he had one.

The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader or a geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way

It is also true that knowing about bank security systems makes it much easier for you to rob a bank. And knowing about human anatomy makes it easier for you to kill people quickly and quietly.

Better for us all to be ignorant, so that we do not inadvertently sin through our knowledge of how the world works.

As someone who's admittedly underinformed and undereducated and who would like to think that, for all of their baser faults and vices, politicians make some kind of attempt to understand their responsibilities so that they can be at least functional representatives of their constituencies, I find the complete lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of the Johnsons and the Trumps deeply fucking insulting. Fucking go crack a book before you try to run a country, you uberdouche.

Hmph. Elitist. Clearly you haven't gotten the memo about how this is a year where people sick of know-it-alls and are ready for change.

Phil, where did you get that quote from? I'd like to point and laugh at it on Facebook but I need a primary source.

I C&Ped the text from Raw Story, but the original clip is on MSNBC here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpTP3T3uwmY

Unlike a frighteningly large percentage of the population, I'd actually prefer to feel that I'm NOT more qualified for elected office than the people running.

xp btw it's not even the stupidest thing he says there. He also apparently doesn't know that we have never been attacked by the nation of Afghanistan, nor that the US is a signatory to the UN convention on genocide.

I am completely unfit to be president on dozens and dozens of levels, so many levels it'd make your head spin, but I can state with complete certainty that I'd make a better president than Trump. That terrifies me.

fuckin maps - how do they work?

Old Lunch 2020

Johnson strikes me as someone only slightly less IDGAF than Trump. Like he maybe at least thumbs through the complimentary copy of USA Today in his hotel room once or twice while he's on the campaign trail, trying to get a sense of what's been happening in the world since the last time he ran for something.

I think he cares about politics as much as he cares about anything, but I'm not sensing a lot of focused attention anywhere in there

Old Lunch 2020

Make Lunches Old Again

Like he maybe at least thumbs through the complimentary copy of USA Today in his hotel room once or twice while he's on the campaign trail, trying to get a sense of what's been happening in the world since the last time he ran for something. solve the Jumble and Sudoku puzzles

Christ, I just now realized this was the first year I could've run for president, too! Well, see you guys on the trail in four years, I guess.

C'mon, man, Gary Johnson never solved any fuckin' Sudoku puzzle.

he's not even a wordy gurdy level intellectual

he draws a pot leaf in every square

I just read this letter to the editor from someone who grew up in the area that's now represented by Steve King in the house. I think it gets at some of the rural identity issues and the underlying tensions better than I've articulated:
https://www.facebook.com/sarita.patnaik.37/posts/10209263503642697

(if you can't see it there, it's also available here: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2016/10/02/king-heres-real-cultural-suicide-iowa-faces/91304942/)

I think this part stuck out:

In fact, your sense that allowing other races to mix into an historically white area will lead to “cultural suicide” couldn’t be more off base.

Cultural suicide occurred when the unions were broken at the packing plants in our hometowns, turning respectable $21-an-hour jobs into back-breaking $11-an-hour labor that couldn’t support a family. Cultural suicide occurs every time you vote to defund public education, stripping Iowa public school teachers of the resources they need to educate the next generation of Iowans even as you accept $10,600 in campaign contributions from the College Loan Corp. — a company that profits from increased student debt. Cultural suicide occurs when you decide to display a Confederate flag on your desk, conveniently forgetting that you represent a state that fought for the Union.

I get it. It’s easier to point fingers at the brown people who take those 3 a.m. shifts at the packing plant and are now raising their families on minimum wage than it is to accept personal responsibility for the ways that your particular brand of strip-mining the Iowan economy is devastating the lives of Iowans.

Johnson gets louder and louder as that goes on to the point where he sounds like he's hysterically freaking out

Josh Marshall
‏@joshtpm

Just saw someone raising a Pepe banner in background of CNN interview with historic civil rights leader. Delete your account, America.

the hillary intern who appropriated 'delete your account' must really be flying high this season

I am completely unfit to be president on dozens and dozens of levels, so many levels it'd make your head spin, but I can state with complete certainty that I'd make a better president than Trump. That terrifies me.

That's been the most infuriating part about talking with Trump supporters - the insistence that "he doesn't always say the right thing" is just something that makes him human and relatable, rather than a huge liability.

I try to picture him at his first big meeting with other world leaders and all I can come up with is Rodney Dangerfield in the pro shop in Caddyshack, except this version is a serious drama, Dangerfield is the bad guy and Ted Knight is the hero.

these things aren't black and white.

Perform a thought experiment with me. In it, George W. Bush wins both in the electoral college and in the popular vote. This would mean he won incontestably and Gore almost certainly would have conceded at once. This seems very black and white to me.

Your hypothesis of massive numbers of protest votes for Nader in NY and CA (but nowhere else?!) would also have led to the Green Party becoming an established party in both those states, which in turn would have given them considerable bargaining power in future elections. It could not have happened without a significant shift in the political landscape and a different future. All of which we could speculate on endlessly.

But what would be the point?

Useful:

https://www.ft.com/content/3a925672-89b2-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731?segmentId=7ac5b61e-8d73-f906-98c6-68ac3b9ee271

As polls have turned against him, Donald Trump’s allies have sometimes placed weight on the existence of a shy tribe of supporters who are reluctant to declare themselves and whose invisibility in the polls means Hillary Clinton’s advantage is being overstated.

The problem for the New York businessman? Pollsters have looked far and wide and deep into their methodology and they say they have struggled to unearth evidence of the shy Trump voter theory advocated among others by Kellyanne Conway, Mr Trump’s campaign manager.

I feel like a lot of the Trump voters are survivors of social trauma and economic hardship and a lot of their cultural identification has become based on those points. "cultural genocide" makes more sense when you realize the shared people they're speaking of is "people who got fucked over" and they know that some of the people selling them answers are actually the ones who fucked them over, but they're not sure which, so they stick with the ones that look like them and entertain them on television.

the green party doesn't 'get considerable bargaining power' in that magical universe. ralph nader successfully influenced the results of the election - legitimately the best outcome he could have hoped for, he mattered - and nobody's conclusion was 'we need to find ways to appeal to those voters next time', the conclusion was 'fuck ralph nader'. we don't have a voting system designed to give any bargaining power to third parties, we have a system designed to give leverage to people willing to work within the party system - regardless of how wild their actually views are. that's why bernie sanders has managed to work himself into a position of considerable influence, whereas ralph nader's going to be remembered by history as the guy who gave us george bush. two guys with broadly similar goals, but only one of them was willing to accept the basic math behind our electoral system.

xp

'actually views' = 'actual views'

I'm picturing the mythological shy Trump voter, a diminutive, balding fellow in a rumpled and oversized suit, nervously kicking the ground and staring at his shoes while he fumbles with his hat. "Aw, gee whiz. Do I...do I really have to talk about my deep and abiding hatred of the blacks? Shucks, I'm just a humble lil' guy who keeps his opinions to myself. Sure, I think those Mexicans and Arabs should go back where they came from but...well, I'm just too nervous to tell them so! C'mon, fellas, do I have to blame others for my problems out loud as long as I'm quietly nursing xenophobia in my heart?"

"Do- do you hate Mexicans too?"

*Blushes*

Awwww

If there's one thing you can count on from nihilistic bigots, it's reticence.

we don't have a voting system designed to give any bargaining power to third parties

Nothing stops the Green Party from nominating the same person as the Democrats, apart from major policy differences. If those differences were narrowed, then the two parties could campaign for the same candidate. If not, then not. When you control enough votes to swing an election, you control enough votes to bargain with.

Donald J. Trump
‏@realDonaldTrump

I will be watching the great Governor @Mike_Pence and live tweeting the VP debate tonight starting at 8:30pm est! Enjoy!

(First response HoF on that tweet, too.)

Nothing stops the Green Party from nominating the same person as the Democrats, apart from major policy differences. If those differences were narrowed, then the two parties could campaign for the same candidate. If not, then not. When you control enough votes to swing an election, you control enough votes to bargain with.

even in a theoretical world where the green party has 'votes to bargain with', it's effectively bargaining with a suicide bomber. when they pull the trigger they get george bush too.

lol

http://gizmodo.com/how-to-stream-tonights-vice-presidential-debate-between-1787362051

I thought for sure the headline was going to be some variation of 'How to Stream Tonight's Vice Presidential Debate Between Mike Pence and Donald Trump's Livetweeting of the Vice Presidential Debates'.

@mikepence Wrong. Wrong. I do think she's a fat, worthless pig, Mike. You're wrong.

I will be watching the great Governor @Mike_Pence and live tweeting the VP debate tonight starting at 8:30pm est! Enjoy!

not tweeted by android, so presumably this will be some modestly professional livetweeting by a team of people who are no donald trump, but anything's possible

I will be watching the great Governor @Mike_Pence and live tweeting the VP debate tonight starting at 8:30pm est! Enjoy!

daylight time, fucko

Donald J. Trump
‏@realDonaldTrump

I was given a faulty iPhone

I'd put the rural Trump voter something like...
Lives in rural area or area on the fringes of a smaller city with these factors:
- Due to depopulation or cuts in funding, the local schools are consolidated (I can think of many high schools with names like Woodward-Granger or Adel-DeSoto-Minburn High School)
- There's at least one industry in the region that's deunionized and is low-pay, like a packing plant or plastics factory
- A number of people, if not the majority, working at the factory are legal immigrants
- The area, again due to depopulation (and the rise of Wal-Mart followed by amazon.com) has few local stores outside of a big box. The stores that thrive are those that cater to the immigrants -- money transfer, international phone cards, ethnic groceries and restaurants.
- The already underfunded school district has to come up with English as a Second Language (ESL/ELL) funding, which the state is loathe to give up because while the state government gives kickbacks to the factory, they also cut back on school funding and don't want to be known as funding ESL education for immigrants

So you have an area that's had depopulation, immigration that's filled low-paying jobs, old storefronts either empty or hosting new immigrant businesses, and underpaying big box stores one town over

"That's just who I am."

So this will probably be the night when Pence, without Trump hovering over his shoulder, goes off-book and repudiates some of the shit his boss has been saying, leading to Trump tweeting about what a pathetic loser Pence is until he ultimately realizes that he can't actually fire him like a common campaign manager.