President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I don't know. In this climate, does decent and kind of boring stand a chance?

Maybe Trump's childish attacks wouldn't work with someone like that. His assholery certainly worked with Clinton because such a large percentage of the population already has an irrational hatred of her.

Whomever the candidate is needs to emerge pretty soon.

 

Remember, Anderson was a "liberal Republican," back in the very final days that such a thing existed. He was run out of the party by the Reaganauts.

 

You guys are so smart!

 

I don't know what else to say except, no, it isn't. As for your second point, you are correct. You could make that argument, and it would probably be a stronger argument than whatever one you are currently attempting to make. Such an argument also wouldn't be at odds with my argument, which is that elections are won by coalitions of voters whose interests align more with each other than with the other side. They are not won by a monolithic bloc of people who all share the exact same world view.

In this election, there was a bloc of voters that thought Trump's treatment of women made him unfit for the Presidency. That bloc was solid Dem long before the Access Hollywood tape. Anybody who cared about that sort of thing was already a part of the coalition. Conversely, anybody who was still undecided after hearing what he said on that AH tape wasn't going to cast their vote based on that issue. They just weren't. The continuous hammering of that message had a limited number of potential outcomes, none of which had the Dems earning any more votes than were already in their camp. On the flip side, one potential outcome of such a course was that it would detract from or drown out some of the compelling arguments for HRC that involved issues that were bigger priorities to the voters in question. Another potential outcome was that people would get so tired of being shamed about their stupidity and amorality that they would retaliate with their vote.

One of the biggest challenges liberals face is reconciling their ideological world to the pragmatic realities of electioneering. Their beliefs about how the world ought to be are often at odds with basic psychological truths regarding the nature of human behavior. The result is that they spend an inordinate amount of time preaching a message that appeals to that narrow sliver atop Maslow's hierarchy -- bathrooms! patriarchy! self-actualization! -- when a far larger number of prospective voters are more concerned about achieving the sense of economic security they need before they can bring themselves to care enough about those loftier pursuits to base their votes on them.

 

Counterargument: Hammering home that shit *worked*. Republicans who would have voted for Trump stayed home in lots of places, counterbalancing his gains in the upper midwest in the popular vote.

Calling sexual assault just that is not demanding purity tests from voters, and it's asinine to argue it is. This all comes down to you feeling uncomfortable with your buddies from HS sports having to confront a world in which their behavior was acknowledged to be assholey, or something?

 

Good read: Liberals can win again if they stop being so annoying and fix their 'hamburger problem'

 

This and keeping Russian interference out of the election. Hard to figure why Trump is so reluctant to do that...

 

I'm a man so I really don't care that much about Fucko's treatment of women.

I'm white so I really don't care that much about Fucko's treatment of minorities.

I'm Christian (nominally) so I really don't care that much about Fucko's treatment of non-Christians.

I'm not physically challenged so I really don't care that much about Fucko's treatment of the physically challenged.

I'm not poor so I really don't care that much about Fucko's treatment of the poor.

But I'm not a member of the 0.0000001 percent, or of Fucko's own family, and he has built his whole public persona out of fucking over everybody who gets in his way as he attempts to fuck everybody else out of every fucking nickel they own. That is who and what he has been for 40 years and anybody who wasn't aware of it is a fucking moron.

In the process of doing all that shit, he's going to fuck ME, so that's why I care about all that other shit, and thats why he's got to go down.

 

I'm not sure I'm following your rationale. Hammering that shit home *worked* enough to keep Republicans who otherwise would have voted for Trump home, but not enough to convince people who otherwise would have voted against Trump to turn out? I suppose its possible, but I'm not sure it's rational to conclude that was the case, unless you're suggesting that people who lean Republican assign more weight to a candidate's admission of sexual assault than people who lean Democrat. And even if that is the case, then wouldn't it still undermine the conclusion that using the final month of the campaign to frame the election as a referendum on Trump's assholishness was a winning strategy? And, to bring it all back to where we started, wouldn't that suggest that the present would be better off spent advancing a message that hasn't already failed to attract a winning number of voters to the polls? Rather than wasting it by attempting to score cheap points against a message board poster with whom you actually share a desired end?

As I've said all along, I understand why it might make you feel better to spend so much energy reinforcing your belief that you are a better, more enlightened person with a superior world view, but it is not viable strategy for winning an election. Moralism only appeals to people tormented by the sense that they have something to prove. Everybody else just thinks you sound hysterical.

 

And I understand why you think that trying to portray yourself as above the fray to protect your friends gives you a second-tier moral highground, but it's bullshit.

 

Well, Rick, there's bullshit.

And then there's bullshit.

Rick.

 

Who are his friends?