Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

xpost Read that as "Tea Party is a dangerous fringe element that the has GOP fingerblasted."

the president runs the country more and more autocratically and most people are ok with that

Isn't this a vicious cycle? Tea Party/Republicans obstruct president, frustrated president goes autocratic, Tea Party/Republicans run against supposedly vast presidential overreach etc.?

They don't have to sit through arcane lectures about tax policy and "small government" or pretend to care about a bunch of abstractions about the gold standard or "tort reform!". Trump is about guns, race, law and order and American dominance, period.

i think this is the essential point, though. and it's interesting because i think a similar dynamic exists on the left as well regarding policy proposals. left or right, i don't think the average person cares very much about that stuff (notwithstanding bubbles of legitimate interest,). instead, the more important thing is an allegiance to an almost gestalt-like shared essence of conservatism or liberalism. 2008's HOPE was something that captured a deeper desire to unite and appreciate diversity and engage with the rest of the world. i guess sanders is the clear underdog but imo he has a chance because he's able to tap into that vibe with some people, whereas hillary cannot.

i guess maybe all of that is obvious (or i'm waaay wrong) but hey, here i am typing on the internet wooooo

yeah that digby bit is totally otm imo

hello I just always like to point out my -i think- correct memory that the tea party originated around the disapproval of bailing out Wall Street and IMO became what it is today because of 1. people turning up their noses at the 'crazy idiots' and & 2. people who didn't mind being associated with 'crazy idiots' co-opting their frustration with those who trashed our economy thanks

Isn't this a vicious cycle? Tea Party/Republicans obstruct president, frustrated president goes autocratic, Tea Party/Republicans run against supposedly vast presidential overreach etc.?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 21, 2016 5:56 PM (23 minutes ago)

bingo.

iab! otm i think

the tea party constantly gets misremembered as originating with rick santelli ranting on CNBC against the bailout -- i swear on my mother there were ur-TP rallies, using that early-republic lingo & iconograpy, strongly associated with the ron paul/goldbug/anti-Fed end of the right, long before that

Yeah, the trump crowd seems to be RW authoritarian followers, the kind that Hofstadter and John Dean and Dr Bob Altemeyer have written about. The kind that go in for "Christianity" more because it's the battle standard of the empire since Constantine moreso than anything some Yeshua dude said. Some have been victimized by late capitalism, and others by modernity. Lots of crossover with those who like Putin way more than the actual American guy in power, icky ex-commie-ness be damned.

2016 dispossessed America, maybe?

Supposedly lots of Republican senators and such coming forward today to say that Trump's far from ideal but better him than Cruz. Following their lead, I forget about Trump and take great satisfaction from this--couldn't happen to a creepier guy.

The way Clinton's scrambling around right now is so reminiscent of 2008. She's got the necessary experience she'll say, and then, when "change" and "outsider" comes up, point out how long Sanders has been a senator. When it's foreign policy, she throws out variations on the 2:00 a.m. phone call. She'll get the nomination, but it's painful to watch.

Bernie may well win both Iowa and New Hampshire.

It looks like he very probably will--big-and-growing leads in both. And expressing anything with certainty (which I don't normally do anyway) seems really dubious in light of Trump. She's much stronger after Iowa/NH, though, although who knows with her--whether you want to call it this bedrock of resistance or just Democrats-like-her-but-just-not-enough, this is the second time in a row that something that was supposed to be a walk is anything but.

the thought now is that bernie remains a longshot, but that winning iowa and new hampshire could conceivably bring him enough media attention -- and hilary enough bad press -- to give him enough momentum to give him an actual chance. but that's only if he takes both

[Trump]’s figured out that the most effective way to get the wage class to rally to his banner is to get himself attacked, with the usual sort of shrill mockery, by the salary class. The man’s worth several billion dollars—do you really think he can’t afford to get the kind of hairstyle that the salary class finds acceptable? Of course he can; he’s deliberately chosen otherwise, because he knows that every time some privileged buffoon in the media or on the internet trots out another round of insults directed at his failure to conform to salary class ideas of fashion, another hundred thousand wage class voters recall the endless sneering putdowns they’ve experienced from the salary class and think, “Trump’s one of us.”

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html

nope

This is an interesting arm of the Clinton campaign, something called "The Briefing" which has its own Youtube channel and its own Facebook page (with only 14,000 likes). I wonder who these videos are aimed at?

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyE0W-DFgBlfd111fts6tQ

Sorry, meant to link specifically to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyE0W-DFgBlfd111fts6tQ

xxposts

^Much ado about nothing imo. Trump's hair is mildly amusing, occasionally mesmerizing, that's all. Come to think of it, I found Ted Kennedy's hair way more "offensive."

see also https://twitter.com/TheBriefing2016/status/690276384032321538

(did they really mean to make israel that shape?)

wow those are some miserable tweets

JFC this is nuts: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2016-01-20/what-kind-of-man-spends-millions-to-elect-ted-cruz-

All cynicism aside, it's so scary that there is a group of such profoundly stupid people with so much money!

xp Those tweets remind me of when Reagan showed a map purportedly demonstrating how the Sandinistas were a stone's throw from Brownsville TX.

schwantz fyi that link didn't work for me ("404 page not found")

Try this link

Looks like dashes at the end of a URL don't get parsed correctly?

Thanks, that worked. The network of obsessives described by that article seems like something Pynchon might have conjured.

Literally spending millions on warehouses full of jars of pee!

In other news, this is pretty great.

And this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIZW5trdE5o

i don't want to overinterpret the results of one very limited study, but if these findings hold i feel like they could be relevant to the trajectory of american democracy:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/humans-arent-as-cooperative-as-we-thought-but-make-up-for-it-via-stupidity/

it's not like stupidity in America or the human race is a new thing

also, reading some news this morning, and I'm seriously wondering if Bernie is pulling Clinton to the left, seems just as likely he'll push her to the right

this "pushing" shit is fiction now and forever, rhetoric aside

DNC and Rodham just admitting her 'progressivism' is 0% convincing

dude c'mon. why do you keep calling her "rodham," it's like a weird version of when righties were doing the "barack HUSSEIN obama" thing. her name's clinton, whether you hate her or not at least call her by her name.

Barry Soetoro

never forget
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gT0AAOSwBadTqPMz/s-l300.jpg

just like cutting her meal-ticket antifeminist factor

also u mighjt wanna consider the Bess Truman "It took me 20 years to get him to say 'manure'" factor.

Anyway my time is better spent on more important matters like a DHless National League. Ta!

(I do think 'Rodham' celebrates the return of the Goldwater Girl within her that is roaring back now as it hasn't in a half century)

I think it celebrates what a sexist fool you are

iron my shirt

no tickee no Hillary

my last two November prez votes btw

2012: Jill Stein
2008: Cynthia McKinney

but enough about me, thx for all the fish

Did you guys see this:
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/21/1472974/-It-turns-out-Donald-Trump-s-father-was-the-racist-landlord-Woody-Guthrie-hated

yeah that's an amazing connection

speaking of amazing connections with racists

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/690562515500032000

our next president has retweeted a message from "WhiteGenocideTM"

one for the "Is Trump a Fascist" thread

this is a good summary of trumpism imo

http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZVul9QWcAQ1Yjr.jpg

laffer? i barely know her

are those effective or marginal tax rates