Trump

[snaff]

What is really NOT clear to me NOT knowing much of the whole situation is "why Hillary is NOT so much loved and/or why many people believe she's some sort of evil witch".

Now this I really don't know, there are quite some we saw interviewed saying "Yes Trump is maybe not perfect but between Trump and Hillary he's better".

So what's this "perception" about Hillary ? What are we missing here ?

[pogo]

How old are those? Gaddafi died five years ago, so I guess that dates the one. The other is from decades before.

And how far back, in contrast, do you need to go to find a video of Trump saying something stupid, offensive or dishonest (or all three at the same time)? No further back than last week when he was speaking at the RNC.

Best speech of the conventions so far? In fact some are saying it’s one of the best convention speeches of all time. This one, yesterday:

And she was only one of many important speakers, in only the first day.

[snaff]

How old are those? Gaddafi died five years ago, so I guess that dates the one. The other is from decades before.

And how far back, in contrast, do you need to go to find a video of Trump saying something stupid, offensive or dishonest (or all three at the same time)? No further back than last week when he was speaking at the RNC.

Best speech of the conventions so far? In fact some are saying it’s one of the best convention speeches of all time. This one, yesterday:

And she was only one of many important speakers, in only the first day.

Sounds like most of it was lifted off Michael Jackson, though if she's right about the Democrats' major commitment to baby goats I can understand that would make them popular around here.

[pogo]

Goats? Fair enough, you don’t have any response to it, it really is too good for that.

Official HRC advert, but one that uses Trump’s own words to great effect.

[Darkflame]

Does Bernie deserve his own thread yet? Media stories are implying his supporters are refusing to support Hillary. He seems to have attracted a group of free-thinking voters who feel disenfranchised and want their democracy back.

Last polls I saw put Bernie supporters at 55%ish voting for Hillary, 20-30%ish voting 3rd party or not at all, and 5% voting Trump.
That was before the DnC started though, so I dunno if that changed anything.

Certainly he gained a lot of people who were disenfranchised, and out of that group I suspect a lot didn't really look into his policy's much.
Those that did though, will almost certainly be supporting Hillary, as the overlap on a lot of things is pretty big.

[snaff]

Goats? Fair enough, you don’t have any response to it, it really is too good for that.

Sure give her an Oscar for the reading, but the speech was written by software.

[pogo]

[ThetaReactor]

I think there are two parts to it. First she is not very charismatic, unlike her husband or Obama. Even Trump in his own way is more relatable than Clinton (though his negatives vastly outweigh his positives). Second Republicans have spend the last year or more attacking her, over Benghazi and her e-mail server. They’ve used their majorities in Congress to hold hearings, pursued every avenue of investigation. They have turned up nothing, no evidence of wrongdoing, but the sheer weight of coverage has weighed down on her.

I’m hopeful it won’t matter. We now have 3-4 months of a straightforward election campaign, where voters get to compare the candidates. I.e. voters will be able to see for themselves what she is like, free of Republican smear campaigns, and contrast her with Trump, whose shown little inclination to moderate and rein in his extremism since winning the primaries.

Starting with the Democratic Party Convention, which starts today. Compared to last week’s Republican one it should be much better – more unified, better run, better attended - and so give her a boost in the polls to set her up for a successful campaign.

From my little understanding one BIG thing that seems to go in favour of Trump is that "Trump does not belong to the usual circle of stuff" .. he's seen like an "outsider" with "maybe more possibility/will to change things" ( I don't say this is true, but this seems to be the perception ) while my understanding is also that Hillary is seen like "one of them, the usual ones" and some people think she has their own agendas.

I think it's a common situation, absolutely NOT to be underestimated ( see what happened here too ) , where lot of people - with quite some rights - perceive a situation of "stale" in the established order of things like "it's always the same no matter what".

Now Trump sounds a lot like "a destructive force" ( and maybe it is more destructive than creative ) BUT people are SO FED UP of "always the same story" that are inclined to think/say "at this point let's make all crash down and see what happens" ..

Dangerous situation, but you can not 100% "blame" for seeing it happening because it is really "stale" with things going too slow or not at all, gives you the feeling ( and it's more than a feeling of course ) that "the whole politics is fixed and little moveable" ..

It's going to be really interesting to see what is going to come out from all this situation, but certainly "the Trump phenomenon" proves there are some very deep issues/problems that need to be sorted in some appropriate way and that so far many people not been happy at all of the response they got.

Now I don't think that Trump has the capability to sort them but he's really "an echo" of the exasperation and frustration that leads to 'extremes' some people are in.

It's "extreme" .. like the problems as well ..

He's loud and mouth and yelling and such .. but "he touched some chords in a certain way" .. I don't say "correct" but certainly "in a very emotional way".

Now try to put VS that someone telling you "no man all cool, stay calm, I promise, we'll sort it all out" .. "there's no match" .. you can't win that thing THAT way I think.

It's "too late" for going "calm and nice and easy".

It's very much a matter of fear and emotions. The working class white guys feel threatened. Black people are making a big fuss, LGBT groups are getting recognition, and all these scary brown people keep coming in. Meanwhile, the middle class is feeling the strain of a widening wealth disparity, largely due to the actions of Republicans. Trump is coming to save the day by Making America Great Again. Great for straight white dudes, like it used to be. Never mind that violent crime has been dropping for years and immigration numbers have actually gone negative.

My mother is a Trump supporter. She's deathly afraid of Muslims, because one of her friends married one and he was an abusive asshole. And I'm the silly one for saying that climate change is a bigger deal than radical nutjobs.

[pogo]

Some data to refute Trump’s claims that America is going in the wrong direction.

This is Trump’s main problem. It’s one thing to run as the candidate of change within the Republican party, as the Republican party has failed to deliver again and again in recent years.

But it’s much harder to pursue the same strategy when things are going so well; by most metrics things have improved, often dramatically, under Obama.

It‘s true some have not done as well, with middle class wages stagnating, with some regions left behind. But who is going to help those people? A New York billionaire who has made his money by exploiting ordinary people, by outsourcing to China many of the products he sells under his name? I don‘t thinks so.

[Neon360]

Goats? Fair enough, you don’t have any response to it, it really is too good for that.

Official HRC advert, but one that uses Trump’s own words to great effect.

Yeah, makes sense. Let's compile the worst shit he's ever said and throw it all in one lump ad so any kid can see it either for the first time or all over again. Kids are watching but here, let's give them a second opportunity to see it again!

[pogo]

He said it as part of his campaign. So one has to assume, if he is true to his word, that he will govern in the same way, true to what he has said. And the children of today will live in the world shaped by Trump, if he is elected. It’s an advert but makes a valid point quite effectively.

[pogo]

More DNC. Yesterday was the roll call, so the official end of the primary, when each state reports the delegates it has for each candidate, and the tally of these determines the winner. As has been expected for months, Clinton won, but they made sure that Sanders was given the acclamation he deserved. First with the actual reading of the delegates, although Clinton won decisively every vote for him was reported and recorded. In particular his brother, Larry Sanders, gave a very personal tribute when delivering the delegates of Overseas Americans.


Then they let Vermont go last, out of order, so Sanders himself could be the one to deliver a motion to end the event and formally declare Clinton as the candidate.


Pure political theatre, aimed at Sanders supporters to show they had been heard and their support recognised, but this campaign is ended for them. Also contrasts starkly with the Republicans. Democrats are united, and used the convention to reinforce that. Republicans aren’t at all.

[zip accident]

I'm not happy with this.

There's many a slip between cup and lip

Wasn't there a democrat who was expected to win by miles in the late sixties or seventies, but didn't?

There are so many ways this can go wrong, including Clinton winning, then an even worse bigot winning later. This could be 1922 to Germany's 1934 (Trump isn't young enough to be the later winner).

The pendulum can only swing so far one way, then it has to come back, the further it goes, the further it comes back.

[KlaxonCow]

Equally, the pendulum loses a little momentum with every swing...

[pogo]

The pendulum can only swing so far one way, then it has to come back, the further it goes, the further it comes back.

Not generally or even mostly. There are many ways that the centre can be shifted, so the pendulum never shifts back. Just under Obama there are many things might never be reversed, such as the Affordable Care act: although Republicans promise to repeal it at first opportunity so many people have benefitted from it that doing so might be political suicide, and they might just punt, or try to reform it incrementally. Gay marriage is another, or attitudes to race relations and police.

One factor in this is demographics, as Blacks and Hispanics make up an ever larger proportion of the electorate. This has given Democrats a stable and reliable base, while Republicans struggle to find enough voters out of the shrinking proportion that is white. This demographic change looks very unlikely to go into reverse and swing back.

Trump is not an extreme reaction to Obama being too left wing (as he isn’t). Trump is a reaction to Republican failure to deliver results for their voters, despite their majorities in Congress. Trump is not really that conservative. He is a nasty bigot but is just saying things that Republicans normally say with more coded language, more subliminally.