The Gaming Den

The really scary bit is that the Trump is still the less bad candidate the republicans managed to dig out to be their champion. The Trump is but the tip of the iceberg that we can see.

maglag wrote:The really scary bit is that the Trump is still the less bad candidate the republicans managed to dig out to be their champion. The Trump is but the tip of the iceberg that we can see.

... I feel like my view of what happened in the Republican primary is totally different than yours was. In my view, what happened was that Trump appealed to a small subset of Republicans with crazy-talk that no other candidate tried to match, so he got that entire segment of the Republican base, while a huge number of more reasonable Republicans split the vote of the more reasonable Republican base (the biggest candidates of which were Kasich, Cruz, Rubio but the huge number of smaller candidates didn't help the situation any). The other guys were not 'good' by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren't as overtly bad as Trump and they split up the more moderate vote so much that Trump won with pluralities, which started to feed into narratives about Trump winning the whole thing.

The problem in my view wasn't an absence of better candidates than Trump, the problem was that there wasn't only one or two candidates different than Trump so the vote was divided a huge amount - of the field, the division was clearly between Trump and Everyone Else, but no-one stood out from the Everyone Else.

Cruz's plan to "carpet bomb" areas with criminals in them is only slightly better than Trump's plan to "nuke" areas with criminals in them. Both claims essentially reveal a level of bloodthirsty insanity that cannot be politely dissected. Yes, Ted Cruz was able to keep his pants off his head long enough to not boast that he would start a nuclear war while killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent civilians in a law enforcement mission - but he still boasted that he was going to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent civilians for the crime of being criminal adjacent.

-Username17

GreatGreyShrike wrote:The other guys were not 'good' by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren't as overtly bad as Trump and they split up the more moderate vote so much that Trump won with pluralities, which started to feed into narratives about Trump winning the whole thing.

The problem in my view wasn't an absence of better candidates than Trump, the problem was that there wasn't only one or two candidates different than Trump so the vote was divided a huge amount - of the field, the division was clearly between Trump and Everyone Else, but no-one stood out from the Everyone Else.

The problem was that on a policy level there was no difference between Trump and anybody else. Trump might be more brash and bold than the rest, but his policies are pretty much the same as all the other policies. It was a fucking clown car, and the only thing that made Trump stand out the most is that he was in whiteface, but they were all wearing the floppy shoes and red noses. There was less space between the GOP candidates than anyone likes to admit, and the mythical moderate GOP voter wasn't going to swing the primary.

Yeah, while you can make an argument about other candidates being more reasonable or moderate, it's basically a deceptive and misleading statement to say that.

I mean, technically, melting someone's face with a flamethrower while they are asleep is less painful than meting them to death slowly over hours with a bic lighter. But that doesn't mean you aren't a liar if you imply that it's not murder because it's less reprehensible.

Also while the Trump did start with a lot of rivals, in about 2 months there was only 1 (arguably two) other republican candidates still on the race.

It was an incredible number of candidates. But that's just it: there's no real limitations on who can be a candidate, no vetting process, few if any restrictions as to who can end up on the ballot at a caucus or a primary. For many of them, if they can get a rich enough backer, there's not even a personal cost attached. Most of those candidates made money on the campaign trail - fuck, Ben Carson was running a book tour.

Ancient History wrote:The problem was that on a policy level there was no difference between Trump and anybody else. Trump might be more brash and bold than the rest, but his policies are pretty much the same as all the other policies. It was a fucking clown car, and the only thing that made Trump stand out the most is that he was in whiteface, but they were all wearing the floppy shoes and red noses. There was less space between the GOP candidates than anyone likes to admit, and the mythical moderate GOP voter wasn't going to swing the primary.

Not really. I mean, Trump doesn't really have policies, but insofar as he has consistent rhetoric on anything he is against immigration (in pretty much all forms and in an incoherent way, but he's still against it) and he's against free trade. Pretty much every other Republican candidate was for either the status quo or further liberalization on those issues. Trump's policies won't actually fix anything, but that's meaningless, because neither would the policies of his rivals. Additionally Trump was (and is, I guess) against cutting social security or medicare - which many of the other Republican candidates were for.

Trump legitimately found a region of political space in the US that contained a section of Republicans and of dissatisfied democrats who felt massively underserved by the current political system on both sides and want someone to blame for their economic insecurity - which has been increasing steadily for four decades.

In the next election I except to see a number of Republican candidates peddling the protectionist anti-immigrant line while promising to protect social security and medicare, but doing their best to be professional and avoid the explicit racism that Trump has been throwing around.

Every single candidate was anti-immigrant and pro tax cuts for rich people. Every god damn one. Scott Walker even talked about building a wall on the Canadian border, and people still aren't sure how much he was joking. Trump didn't find a space where Republicans wanted a political outsider - Trump realized, as the rest of the goombahs didn't, that he didn't need to win 60% of the Republican vote. He just needed to pander to the 40% that vote in the primaries, which gave him a majority compared to the other assholes. And that 40%? They don't care about tax breaks. They want red meat. They want the most anti-liberal asshole they can find - and they'll vote for him no matter how outrageous they are. Trump won because he saw that there was a market for Sarah Palin, and the rest of the assholes lost because they were trying to play the same old game. They didn't know the rules had changed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/po ... trump.html

Ancient History wrote:Every single candidate was anti-immigrant

That may be a true statement, but actually living Republican primary voters do not believe that. They believed that most of the 'mainstream' candidates were actually for comprehensive immigration reform (which they consider 'amnesty') in the same way that Marco Rubio was with the possible exception of Ted Cruz.

As far as the tax breaks go, it's not even that 40% of the Republicans don't care about them, it's more like 95% percent of the Republicans don't actually vote on massive tax cuts. Most Republicans vote on things like guns, abortion, and the perception that government is screwing them over by giving their money to those who don't deserve it which includes all the racist sentiment you expect but also targets actual poor white people too and covers the whole immigration subcategory. Trump has the same BS tax cut plan as all the other Republicans, but he smartly avoided emphasizing it during the primaries.

The Republican party is very different from the Democratic party in terms of its policy platform. The democrats actually care about theirs. The overwhelming majority of Republican voters don't care about theirs at all because they believe that government has no impact on their lives beyond taxes and a tiny number of programs (heck Republicans who work for the federal government believe that government is totally useless but that they are great at their jobs in an act of staggering cognitive dissonance) like Social Security and Medicare (which are 'earned' and therefore somehow different). So if you propose something significantly different in an area they do care about - like Trump did with his idea of banning immigration by Muslims - you attract a far greater amount of attention than an equivalent policy departure would among democrats.

Trump and Cruz together pulled 70% of the primary vote. Trump and Cruz were both some variety of culture war candidates; one white nationalist, one fundamentalist. Kasich and Rubio together pulled 25% of the vote. Kasich and Rubio, while obviously willing to throw bones to white nationalists and fundamentalists in order to keep them voting in the general, branded themselves as electable moderates.

Republican voters who are concerned about the "diminishing purity of our white Christian america" or whatever outnumber the people who think handouts for billionaires are a path to prosperity by more than two to one. That was probably always true, but general dissatisfaction with government and the recent gerrymandering has probably significantly reduced the Republican party's control over its own primary process - resulting in Republican voters getting the candidates they actually want.

Trump's falling in the polls is affecting the GOP's chance to hold the senste

We've known for a while that this election favored the Democrats for retaking the senate, but it's interesting to see Trump pulling the party down with him.

Interesting piece about the way the Clinton campaign paints Trump is beneficial to the GOP machine.

Trump going down in flames the way he is allows the worst aspects of the Republican party to be cast out as a scapegoat without them changing shit. It also allows the mythical moderate Republican to become a Blue Dog Dem with no real change in belief systems or way of doing things.

Mask_De_H wrote:Interesting piece about the way the Clinton campaign paints Trump is beneficial to the GOP machine.

Trump going down in flames the way he is allows the worst aspects of the Republican party to be cast out as a scapegoat without them changing shit. It also allows the mythical moderate Republican to become a Blue Dog Dem with no real change in belief systems or way of doing things.

Well that last part is pretty standard, since the Technocrat Dems that have ruled the party since Clinton I sure would love it if there were a few more right dems to balance against those filthy leftists so they can compromise on just being technocrats.

Yeah, I think it's kind of fucking obvious at this point that Clinton is maneuvering to strengthen the blue dog wing of the party. For fuck's sake, Tim Kaine is pro-right to work, pro-dystopian Shadowrun trade deals, and probably pro-life whenever he thinks he can get away with it. The fact that that asshole is on the ticket - and anyone anywhere is trying to convince us he represents a sensible, moderate, and inoffensive VP choice - tells you what Clinton and the horrifically centrist media actually want for the future of the Democratic party - and it's for them to be a bunch of fucking crooks who are less assholish to underprivileged groups. Probably. Like I said, Tim Kaine honestly does not inspire confidence in me that women will actually have their rights enthusiastically protected.

If the Republican party actually does collapse and send a bunch of fiscal conservatives and social moderates into the Democratic party, then Democrats will win more elections but progressives will not. And I'm going to call that a loss, because we were probably going to win those elections anyway and I'll just be stuck settling for worse assholes for no reason.

So the status quo supports the status quo? Who'd'a thunk it.

Like I said, Tim Kaine honestly does not inspire confidence in me that women will actually have their rights enthusiastically protected.

Hillary Clinton is a woman, who picked Tim Kaine, based on his record of saying what his local tribalists want him to say, while voting progressive anyway. So that's you not trusting expert women to make good decisions for women, just a bit, eh.

And yes, they want to win the flyover states, they're getting close to having a filibuster-proof government for 2 years where they can catch up on a couple decades of getting a bit behind on progressive issues. Already talking progressive constitutional amendments if this election goes well enough, and obviously stacking the Supreme Court. They need those flyovers.

tussock wrote:based on his record of saying what his local tribalists want him to say, while voting progressive anyway.

Wow, what a lying fuck you are.

Tussock, this is the second time you've made the incredibly stupid "women can never be wrong about feminist causes" argument. Which is weird, because if you actually knew jackshit about this topic you would know there were prominent anti-feminist women, and having a vagina hasn't made them any less of an asshole than if they had a penis. It's almost like feminism is about protecting women's rights, and not about blind deference to people with a particular gender identity and/or sexual anatomy.

Here are some of the actual fucking facts you are going to have to deal with: when Tim Kaine was governor, he spent state funds on pregnancy crisis centers, which are misleadingly named private pro-life institutions with a known penchant for disseminating false information to pregnant women about the risks and consequences of abortion. In any sane world, such an act would be criminal. Lying to people seeking medical treatment can and will ruin their lives, and sometimes - yes, even in the instance of abortion - fucking kill them. It's absolutely not the sort of cause which can justifiably be offered government sponsorship. It's absolutely not 'progressive,' unless your secret definition of progressive is "man, woman suck, and I like it when bad things happen to them." I mean, that would explain why you are so consistently shit at identifying people who are a threat to feminist causes.

He's defended Virginia's "informed consent" law, which is really just another misleadingly named law about how you are required to subject yourself to a medically unnecessary ultrasound while being guilt tripped and given misleading information. He helped pass bans on mid-term abortions. He supported parental consent abortion requirements. All the organizations he is now supposably earning stellar records from him gave him and/or his state absolute shit ratings while he was governor.

Of course, that's all ancient history - it was a whopping four years ago, and everyone knows that no one really meant anything they said or did four years ago. But hey, guess what he was doing two months ago? Writing letters to federal regulators telling them to go easy on those poor, over-regulated banks. How progressive of him.

Shut up, tussock, you ill-informed shitlord.

DSM wrote:Yeah, I think it's kind of fucking obvious at this point that Clinton is maneuvering to strengthen the blue dog wing of the party.

Hillary is running on what is literally the most leftist platform the Democrats have ever had in the history of the country. Clinton is working to get Democrats elected in red and purple areas, but she's also out there campaigning for Democrats in solid blue areas with strong progressive bonafides.

The bizarre conspiracy theories that Hillary is somehow secretly right wing are bad. They are bad for the progressive causes they are supposedly concern trolling for. DSM: seriously you have to stop taking rightwing propaganda aimed at leftists at face value. It's fucking embarrassing. Brexit remains horrible despite you shilling for it, and Hillary remains the farthest left person likely to ascend to the presidency in either of our lifetimes despite your "concerns" that she is a secret right winger.

The gulf between the most RINO Republican in congress and the most DINO Democrat in congress is fucking immense. The amount of progressive agenda we actually get to see is completely proportional to how many people with -Ds after their names sit in congressional seats. That's fucking it. Acting like trying to win everywhere is somehow a failure of purity is itself a failure of purity. You are the traitor to the cause here, not her. Stop it. Just fucking stop it.

It was bad when you were cheerleading the anti-immigrant movement in the UK which was and is dangerous and evil. It's bad right now when you're repeating Karl Rove's memes to undermine Democratic voter enthusiasm. We need to win, and we need to win big. 2018 is going to go badly for us, because we have a lot of seats to defend, we need to win big now so that we can lock in progressive changes now. That is the only way we're going to get the voting rights act back or get some fucking legislation to address climate change. We need to run up the score here, and you being a whiny little boy about it doesn't help.

-Username17

What? Leftist Democrats have concerns that the party leaders might be buying their votes with promises of leftism and threats of the terror of what happens if they don't win, but will then provide centrism-mild-conservatism as normal once elected, and those concerns are based on the last 24 years of that exact thing happening to them? Better tell them that they have no reason to be concerned and that all their concerns are unfounded because the racism is bad and if they don't elect the Clinton in a landslide of purple senators and a purple vice president who promise to do anything economically left then they are filthy racists. That will totally solve the problem...

If "helping vs not" is the metric by which we decide whether or not someone needs to shut up. No one needs to shut up more than you Frank.

Here let me help you out:

The tactics which one uses to argue against psychopaths in a way that convinces bystanders to side with you against the psychopath are not in fact, the same tactics you should use to convince people with legitimate concerns who you need on your side.

You know, technocrat would be rulers would be cooler if they were Mage: the Ascension Technocrats, because at least then they'd have Terminators and transhuman shit.

FrankTrollman wrote:The bizarre conspiracy theories that Hillary is somehow secretly right wing are bad. They are bad for the progressive causes they are supposedly concern trolling for. DSM: seriously you have to stop taking rightwing propaganda aimed at leftists at face value. It's fucking embarrassing. Brexit remains horrible despite you shilling for it, and Hillary remains the farthest left person likely to ascend to the presidency in either of our lifetimes despite your "concerns" that she is a secret right winger.

I am completely fed up with your bizarre and stupid strawmen. The "conspiracy theory" I supposedly subscribe to is not that Hillary Clinton is Jeb Bush in drag. It is that the grip of people like Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine on the Democratic party establishment is an impediment to the rise of people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. It is that the media's portrayal of people like Tim Kaine as sensible moderates engenders a tolerance for corruption and cruelty that we should not tolerate in our politicians. Tim Kaine should not be on that ticket. Hillary Clinton should not have picked him. The media should not be telling us what a safe, reasonable pick Tim Kaine is. Tim Kaine's a centre-right asshole who only looks good because the Republican party has spent forty years going further and further into crazytown.

I support regulation of the financial sector. I support unions. I oppose abortion restrictions in all forms. I support protecting women from misleading medical information. I oppose the expansion of IP law to protect the interests of monopolistic megacorporations from competition. Tim Kaine will never in a fucking million years represent my interests. The only nice thing I can say about Tim Kaine is that "he's not quite a Republican." And you know what? I've already fucking said, and that was not enough for you. You are demanding that I set aside legitimate political differences - and my legitimate fucking horror that Tim Kaine will be in the white house, one Trump-inspired white supremacist woman-hating lunatic away from running our fucking country - in order to silence my criticisms and cheerlead for a piece of shit bluedog. You are insisting not only that I acknowledge and vote for the lesser of two evils, but I do so while tossing my principles under the fucking bus in order to do so with a smile, pretending Santa put exactly what I asked for under the tree.

Fuck you, Frank. If you ever actually want progressive politicians, one of your precious centre-left technocrats will have to lose their fucking primary. And guess what? We will have to say mean things about them in order to make them lose that primary. We will have to convince people that they can - and should - aim for better than that. If you actually fucking want a future in which the Scandinavian model you have spent your entire fucking time here praising, we will have to call out politicians for failing to live up to that model! Because if you don't fucking do that, then you will end up with what has happened in Europe, where the left-wing nearly fucking destroys itself bending over backwards to tolerate a right-wing agenda.

People like you are the reason the austerity narrative went unopposed by mainstream politicians in so many European countries. People like you are the reason Tim Kaine is seen as a responsible choice for vice president instead of for the fucking horror that he is. For god's sake, our first woman president's VP spent his entire gubernatorial career butting heads with pro-choice organizations! Think about that, you piece of shit! How is that not depressing to you that one of the greatest feminist accomplishments of our lifetime is going to give her inauguration speech standing next to a man who - as little as four years ago - advocated tormenting and humiliating women seeking abortions?

"Trump is worse" doesn't mean we still can't do better. Fuck your complacency. It will hurt us more than my "Hillary Clinton isn't what I ordered, but I guess I'll take it" ever will.

DSMatticus wrote:It is that the media's portrayal of people like Tim Kaine as sensible moderates engenders a tolerance for corruption and cruelty that we should not tolerate in our politicians. Tim Kaine should not be on that ticket. Hillary Clinton should not have picked him. The media should not be telling us what a safe, reasonable pick Tim Kaine is.

The thing is the 'leftist' or 'progressive' or whatever you want to call it faction of the democratic party represents a minority of Democratic primary voters, never mind the general electorate. Bernie, who aggregated a lot of votes not just by representing the concerns of the leftists but also by having the advantage of opposing the personally much-disliked Hillary Clinton, still lost.

Tim Kaine is moderate by any comparison with opinions nationwide (a nation, by the way, that is almost certainly going to see 40% of its voting public pull the lever for Trump). You can dislike Tim Kaine and push for better candidates all you like, but the media's characterization that he is a moderately liberal democrat is by no means inaccurate.

If you want to massively shift the United States towards the left you need to recognize where you stand from the outset. The position of the left is strong on the internet and weaker elsewhere and is currently in the middle of promoting a massive backlash against it from traditionally liberals - something that Bernie's candidacy did not help with in the slightest.

I don't like Tim Kaine very much myself and find his position on abortion abhorrent but that doesn't make him not a moderate. He is liberal on balance while being conservative on some issues - like most people actually he doesn't hew the party line on every topic. He would not be, by any means, a 'fucking horror' as President and claiming that he would be contributes to political hyper-polarization and anti-liberal backlash.

Mechalich wrote:Tim Kaine is moderate by any comparison with opinions nationwide (a nation, by the way, that is almost certainly going to see 40% of its voting public pull the lever for Trump). You can dislike Tim Kaine and push for better candidates all you like, but the media's characterization that he is a moderately liberal democrat is by no means inaccurate.

This is factually not true. That the media has convinced you it is true is, in fact, exactly one of the things I am bitching about. When likely Republican voters had the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's roles and duties explained to them, 59% of them expressed support. That's Republicans. Two months ago, Tim Kaine signed a letter to the CFRB telling them to back off and stop doing their job. Tim Kaine's stance on financial regulation is in the narrow minority among Republican voters - among Democratic voters he's a fucking pariah. On the specific issue of financial (de)regulation, Tim Kaine is in the left-most 50% of the Senate, but in the right-most 25% of the country - at least when you present the issue in terms of policy and voters aren't sure what their tribalist marching orders are.

Tim Kaine genuinely does not have a place on a nation-wide ticket - particularly not on the blue side. Policy-wise, he is a greater deviation from voters' wishes than Bernie fucking Sanders. But the media talks about Sanders like he's a crazy old man from the fringe left, and it talks about Tim Kaine like he is normalcy incarnate. Your expectations have been shaped by a media and political environment that is wildly unrepresentative of the actual voting public, and you should remember that what these assholes tell you is normal really isn't. These are very, very big brands and institutions, and they are not perfectly elastic with respect to our wishes. We have to actually drag them behind us. It's work, and it requires being willing to express your dissatisfaction.

Mechalich wrote:Tim Kaine is moderate by any comparison with opinions nationwide (a nation, by the way, that is almost certainly going to see 40% of its voting public pull the lever for Trump). You can dislike Tim Kaine and push for better candidates all you like, but the media's characterization that he is a moderately liberal democrat is by no means inaccurate.

False. "Moderate in comparison to the entire country in which half the people would vote for Hitler" does not mean "moderately liberal democrat." But that is the jump you just made between two sentences. He's an extremely anti-left democrat.

Mechalich wrote:If you want to massively shift the United States towards the left you need to recognize where you stand from the outset. The position of the left is strong on the internet and weaker elsewhere and is currently in the middle of promoting a massive backlash against it from traditionally liberals - something that Bernie's candidacy did not help with in the slightest.

You live in a delusional fantasy land. The left in the United States has been suffering from a massive frontlash from "traditional liberals" since the Clinton administration. We do recognize where we are starting from, and that's the entire point. The left is never going to make any progress at all by pretending that increasingly right wing technocrats controlling the party is totally fine, and if all the good little leftists would just pipe down, not be so uppity, and let the big boy technocrats win all the elections (Please give us all your money and your votes, you wouldn't want the racists to win would you?) and we promise to make good decisions for you.

Sander's candidacy can do nothing but help, and did help, since it dragged Clinton left, and proved that a huge portion of the democratic party wants actual leftism. Or at least, it would have proved that if the technocrats, the media, and apologists thereof didn't immediately jump in to claim that advocating for leftist policies that help minorities is proof that you are a racist because minorities preferred an established respected national politician to a kook from Vermont with weird hair they had never heard of before.

Hillary Clinton is a perfectly acceptable candidate, both for system reasons (she will have to fight tooth and nail to pass any budget that doesn't feature a Final Solution for the Jews somewhere in it) and because if she follows through on the things she only started talking about after a kook from Virginia started giving her too much of a primary fight, she's an acceptable leftwing candidate.

But that doesn't change that Tim Kaine is a slap in the face to anyone who actually thought she was going to follow through. She still might, but she clearly wants to make good and sure that everyone knows there's a good chance she won't (so please vote for her). And people like Tim Kaine, and the media that paint Time Kaine as a reasonable VP choice for a democrat who for god sakes should be striving to get support from the actual goddam left, are part of the problem.

The problem is that the Overton window exists, and Hillary Clinton, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and Frank Trollman are all convinced that moving that thing as far to the right as you can get it by shit talking even the pretense that leftists exist in this universe. Leftists aren't going to win by agreeing to push the window further so that they are complete cropped out, and that's what you, and Frank Trollman are saying.