Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pattern Ghost]

An optimistic* estimate from The Daily Caller:

 

Political Science Professor: Odds Of President Trump Range BETWEEN 97% AND 99%

 

 

 

 

 

*Edit: Well, it's a Conservative site, but optimistic may still be too strong of a word.

[csyphrett]

I think the professor hasn't gauged the party assumption right. Trump's party doesn't want him to run. All the other elections didn't have that.

The panthers were predicted to win the Super Bowl too 

CES

[Pariah]

I think the professor hasn't gauged the party assumption right. Trump's party doesn't want him to run. All the other elections didn't have that.

 

The panthers were predicted to win the Super Bowl too 

 

CES

 

Thank you. I needed a grin this morning. 

[CaptnStrawberry]

It is hard to see Trump bringing in a big turn-out come November.  The establishment is disowning him.  Most women and minorities are offended by him.  Educated folks fear him.  The evangelical wing of the GOP has no connection to him.  Conservatives see him as a liberal.  But if every 'angry white male' in the nation votes for him. . . .?

[Pariah]

. . . then they'll be even angrier when Hillary is elected?

[massey]

The makeup of political parties is not uniform, particularly in our system.

 

You can have a 45 year old white union worker in Ohio, a 70 year old black guy in Alabama, a 28 year old gay fashion designer in San Francisco, and a 60 year old Jewish grandmother in NYC, all Democrats.  There's a strong possibility that none of them like each other.  Republicans have the same type of divisions.  The survivalist in Montana, the church mom in Kansas, the executive in Manhattan, all Republicans but very little alike.

 

I think what has happened over the past 20+ years is that Bill Clinton, always one to choose political expediency over, well... everything else, moved to the right on economic and military issues.  NAFTA.  "The era of big government is over!"  Sex scandal?  Let's invade Bosnia.  The Democratic Party has gradually moved away from supporting that 45 year old Ohio union guy.  When was the last time the national Democrats really pushed for any legislation designed to help blue collar workers?  You can say Obamacare, but that was really targeted at lower incomes.

 

It used to be that the Dems were the party of ivory tower intellectuals, black people, the poor, and the blue collar working man.  Since Clinton (and arguably, it was happening before), they shifted their focus.  They've been much more concerned with gay rights (and now transgender rights,but that's a real small percentage of voters) than they have with representing Joe Sixpack.  The Democratic Party is a lot more likely to appeal to college educated Millennials than it is lower-middle class workers.  "Raising the minimum wage" doesn't appeal to you if you already earn $15 an hour.

 

So what has happened is this group of people, former Democrats, are now looking for a place where they belong.  Because of the Republican Party's support of "traditional values", these guys have found a home.  Joe Sixpack doesn't really like welfare moms, and isn't necessarily wild about abortion or gay marriage.  The Republicans aren't doing too much to help him economically, but at least they have the same social beliefs that he has.  The Dems weren't doing anything monetarily for him either, and he really doesn't feel at home with social justice warrior types.  So this group has shifted over to the Republican Party.

 

Now the Republicans are just as diverse a group as the Democrats.  From rich bankers to conservative Christians, they have lots of different beliefs.  And in the post-Reagan years, they had a good balance going, but it was usually led by the pro-business group.  But since Obama took office, there have been fractures in the party.  Establishment Republicans were happy, because income tax rates have stayed low, and business profits have been high.  Tea Party Republicans were angry, because the deficit is growing.  But Establishment Republicans have never really cared about the deficit that much (big businesses often run big debts).  It was just a cost of doing business.  And the new Joe Sixpack Republican was suddenly VERY concerned about immigration.  Most Republicans didn't care too much about that, historically, because they like cheap labor.  A bank executive isn't worried about Pablo from Mexico taking his job.  But Joe Sixpack the truck driver is very worried about it.

 

This tension has created the RINO accusation (Republican In Name Only).  The accusation that you weren't conservative enough on whatever issue the accuser cared about.  There are now a very large group of Joe Sixpack Republicans who don't really care about cutting taxes on big businesses or on the rich.  Now Donald Trump comes along, and he's screaming a bunch of very populist ideas.  He's proposed a lot of un-Republican economic strategies.  He's not appealing to the Wall Street Republican group.  He's appealing to Joe Sixpack.  Isolationism, building a wall, imposing tariffs on foreign goods, these are old school Democrat policies.  He's not a traditional Republican.  He's a populist.  It just so happens that changes in the Democratic party in the past 20 years have sent all the people who populism appeals to over to the Republicans.

 

There's an economic dividing line in American society.  In the last few years, I've gone from "struggling to get by" and crossed over into "I suddenly have a decent amount of extra money at the end of each month".  I crossed the dividing line about a year ago.  I'm by no means rich, but unless I do something really stupid, I will be very comfortable in a few years.  I'm now much more concerned with what the higher tax rates are.  I used to be a moderate Republican (raised socially conservative, and conservative in my personal life, and I always wanted to have lots of money), but I'm certainly not a populist.  And now I'm finding that Hillary Clinton may be closer to my beliefs than anybody else.  She's pro-business, won't raise my taxes, and she's a ball-buster in foreign policy.  It's a very weird feeling, having the parties switch positions underneath your feet.  I still don't really like Hillary, at all.  But Trump is Huey Long.

[megaplayboy]

Why is Donald Trump's latest book so long?

 

Because it has 4 Chapter 11s.

 

 

Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

[Lord Liaden]

Populism is one of the easiest platforms to campaign on, and one of the hardest to govern from.

 

This is an election in which a capitalist born with a silver spoon in his mouth has become the champion of Joe Sixpack, and a 70-year-old Jewish man has become the champion of young social-justice warriors. Interesting times, indeed.

[Ragitsu]

I don't engage in fear based voting. I don't engage in slippery slope fallacies. I won't vote for Hillary.

I don't vote for a candidate that:

- Supported the Iraq War.
- Pushed Obama into Libya (what he says is his biggest mistake).
- Pushed military action for Syria (and wants a no fly zone).
- Pushes for military action against Iran (or at least the option. Gee...very Republican, eh?).
- Supported the TPP (her state department helped write it and she lobbied for it forty-five times!).
- Supported NAFT.
- Supported/lobbied for the Omnibus Crime bill for the tough on crime part (not for the violence against women part or the assault rifle ban).
- Flip flops on gay marriage.
- Flip flops on guns.
- Engages in dirty politics to "artfully smear" her opponents (Bernie Bros and Obama Boys and using Kennedy assassination or Sandy Hook against her opponents).
- Sold weapons to nations around the world while pretending to be anti-weapon (BTW, one of those weapon manufacturers she helped sell weapons for was the same one that created the assault rifle used in Sandy Hook).
- Pushed fracking around the world (climate change advocate? Yeah right).

I can go on and on. There are so many negatives with Hillary. I will never support her as my vote is earned, not given. No, I won't vote Trump either. And a vote for another is not a vote for a different candidate. That's a false dichotomy fallacy.

They can keep their tribalism.

[Iuz the Evil]

Nothing has changed around my voting choices the past couple months. If he's around I'll vote for Bernie in the primary, and Hilary in the general.

[Ragitsu]

I have no problem with #2 as long as it is temporary to put better technology or techniques in place to discover radicalized elements trying to find their way into the country.

 

"Hey you. Yeah you, brown dude! Get over here. Eat this BLT and we'll let you in."

 

I wonder why people think "Muslim" is an ethnicity.

[Badger]

"Hey you. Yeah you, brown dude! Get over here. Eat this BLT and we'll let you in."

 

I wonder why people think "Muslim" is an ethnicity.

 

I cant say I understand it.  I think it is seen that "Middle Easterners" are generally, more likely than not to be Muslim.  I guess you can be "fairly" accurate with that theory.  You'll still miss a lot of people (those from Indonesia, and from the former Yugoslavian states aren't going to look "Muslim" to name just 2 examples).  And fairly accurate aint a good reason to use the Consititution as toilet paper.  I do think for most it is born out of ignorance more than malice.  But, those who support this should remember, road to hell paved in good intentions and all. 

 

Note:  "Fairly" accurate would be what 70 percent, 60 percent, less?  And let us not forget some of those "Muslims" are liable to be Coptic Christians or other such groups fleeing from religious persecution in the first place.

 

2nd Note:  And when the TSA started losing their damn mind, my thought was "random sexual molestation isn't a selling point for me feeling safer on a plane".  I haven't changed on that.

[megaplayboy]

I know there are people who don't like the "vote for the lesser evil" argument, but to put things in historical context, there were people on the left who were highly critical of Al Gore and who voted for Ralph Nader instead, or who stayed home. Some of those Nader voters lived in Florida. In retrospect, was that principled moral stand the best choice? Were there serious consequences for the electorate and the American people as the result of that choice? If you put those Florida Nader voters in a time machine and sent them back to Election Day 2000, how many would make the exact same choice?

It isn't fear-mongering when you simply reiterate the other candidate's stated policy platform. It's reality. Not every election affords an opportunity to vote FOR someone. Sometimes it really IS about voting against the greater evil. In this election, imo, it's akin to choosing between Dracula...and Cthulhu. Dracula is bad and evil, but...

[Ragitsu]

I think that, in this case, "Dracula versus Nosferatu" is a more apt comparison.

[megaplayboy]

I think that, in this case, "Dracula versus Nosferatu" is a more apt comparison.

Do you think Latinos, African-Americans, Muslim-Americans and single women are inclined to agree with that? A Republican elected president will have a Republican congress passing conservative policy, appointing conservative judges, etc. It's not just the presidency at stake. It's control of the entire government. And one of those candidates will enact policies which are absolutely devastating and catastrophic for vulnerable groups who happen to be traditional liberal-left constituencies. That's not fear-mongering. That's reality. This is politics. Most elections don't feature candidates who perfectly match what we want. Instead, we have to take the bad with the good. Even choosing not to choose can have moral consequences. If Trump turns out to be worse than Dubya, maybe even twice as bad, and your vote could have made a difference, will you feel comfortable with the choice you made? If so, then go ahead. If not, then you gotta swallow hard and pull the lever for the other guy. C'est la vie.

[megaplayboy]

The alternative argument to "vote for the lesser evil" is "why cut off your nose to spite your face?"

[megaplayboy]

If you want something to vote FOR, how about a 5-4 liberal/left SCOTUS? That ain't nothin', if you're a liberal/progressive/leftie. It is a BFD.

[megaplayboy]

I should add that I respect the feelings and sentiments expressed, but I vehemently disagree with the conclusions drawn. I think we always have to make choices with an eye towards the alternatives, and the consequences of those decisions.

[gewing]

If you want something to vote FOR, how about a 5-4 liberal/left SCOTUS? That ain't nothin', if you're a liberal/progressive/leftie. It is a BFD.

And if you support gun rights, a Hillary selected Supreme Court with 1-4 Justices of had choice is terrifying.

 

This election sucks.

[TheDarkness]

If you want something to vote FOR, how about a 5-4 liberal/left SCOTUS? That ain't nothin', if you're a liberal/progressive/leftie. It is a BFD.

Just curious, what has been your opinion when the court is the other way around?

[massey]

Can I get a candidate who isn't either a crazy loudmouth or a corrupt snake?

 

No?  Crap.

[CaptnStrawberry]

Exactly, it's now looking like a choice between Greater Evils.   I really don't feel represented by either major party (and haven't for many years).

[megaplayboy]

Just curious, what has been your opinion when the court is the other way around?

Can you please clarify? Do you mean shifting to the right, or just when the court has been more conservative?

[megaplayboy]

100 years ago in this country, this year's presumptive Democratic nominee would not have been able to vote, let alone run for president. Food for thought.

[BoloOfEarth]

In the Captain America: Civil War thread, someone mentioned Cap's "tree" quote, which prompted me to look it up in Wikiquotes.  Along the way, I found this little gem:

 

 

Listen to me -- all of you out there! You were told by this man -- your hero -- that America is the greatest country in the world! He told you that Americans were the greatest people -- that America could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly!  He went on about how precious America was -- how you needed to make sure it remained great!  And he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great price that is America!

 

Well, I say America is nothing!! Without its ideals -- its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!  A nation is nothing! A flag is a piece of cloth!

 

I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different than them!

 

When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn American into nothing!

 

And the only reason you're not less then nothing ---- is that it's still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!

 

(quoted from What If?, #44)

 

Really wish Steve Rogers was running for President.  Or anyone even remotely like him.