Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Bitter Almonds]

Beating trump should be a lay-up. It's only difficult for political hacks and those who are undistinguishable from him... like shrillary.

[quash]

Let's see. Do I want things to remain the same, or do I want all of humanity to undergo a complete cessation of existence as it crumbles and burns away in torrential hellfire?

Well, Bernie didn't get the nomination, so obviously let's go with hellfire. There will be future elections, after the total obliteration of civilization.

How unaware can one person be?

If you haven't noticed, Hillary is the one itching for a fight with Russia and Iran.

[Giest118]

And Trump is the one who's going to launch nukes in response to mean tweets.

[Bitter Almonds]

Let's see. Do I want things to remain the same, or do I want all of humanity to undergo a complete cessation of existence as it crumbles and burns away in torrential hellfire?

Well, Bernie didn't get the nomination, so obviously let's go with hellfire. There will be future elections, after the total obliteration of civilization.

How unaware can one person be?

If you haven't noticed, Hillary is the one itching for a fight with Russia and Iran.

And arm the isreali terrorists with more WMD.

[quash]

Israel is only going to lose support the moment the people that run the US are no longer sympathetic to Christianity.

And nobody tweets as mean as Trump.

[Cee]

Let's see. Do I want things to remain the same, or do I want all of humanity to undergo a complete cessation of existence as it crumbles and burns away in torrential hellfire?

Well, Bernie didn't get the nomination, so obviously let's go with hellfire. There will be future elections, after the total obliteration of civilization.

You must be quite the democrat partisan if you can't see that Hillary poses a much greater threat to international security than Trump, either that or you digest and fall for left biased mainstream media on a daily basis.

[BryanM]

Israel is only going to lose support the moment the people that run the US are no longer sympathetic to Christianity.

And nobody tweets as mean as Trump.

Religion has nothing to do with our support of Israel beyond a merely cosmetic angle.

Our policy there is determined exactly the same way every single other policy is: $. Israel can afford to buy politicians. Palestine can't.

[BulletMagnet]

You must be quite the democrat partisan if you can't see that Hillary poses a much greater threat to international security than Trump, either that or you digest and fall for left biased mainstream media on a daily basis.

I'm interested to hear how she intends to do worse than abandoning NATO (just for starters), inviting Putin (and other strongmen he admires) to run amok, favoring increased nuclear proliferation, and openly demoting the world's Muslims to second-class global citizens. And that's before you even get into his plan to destroy the dollar to "solve" the national debt and his dismissal of climate change as a hoax (even as he specifically cites it as a reason to renovate a golf course on someone else's dime).

Also, to repeat myself from earlier, criticizing Putin's invasion of Crimea does not automatically equal wanting war with Russia, and that's the only "evidence" I've seen of this supposed bloodlust on her part.

[Mischief Maker]

You must be quite the democrat partisan if you can't see that Hillary poses a much greater threat to international security than Trump, either that or you digest and fall for left biased mainstream media on a daily basis.

I'm interested to hear how she intends to do worse than abandoning NATO (just for starters), inviting Putin (and other strongmen he admires) to run amok, favoring increased nuclear proliferation, and openly demoting the world's Muslims to second-class global citizens. And that's before you even get into his plan to destroy the dollar to "solve" the national debt and his dismissal of climate change as a hoax (even as he specifically cites it as a reason to renovate a golf course on someone else's dime).

Also, to repeat myself from earlier, criticizing Putin's invasion of Crimea does not automatically equal wanting war with Russia, and that's the only "evidence" I've seen of this supposed bloodlust on her part.

Maybe we should try talking to them.

[Bitter Almonds]

Israel is only going to lose support the moment the people that run the US are no longer sympathetic to Christianity.

And nobody tweets as mean as Trump.

Religion has nothing to do with our support of Israel beyond a merely cosmetic angle.

Our policy there is determined exactly the same way every single other policy is: $. Israel can afford to buy politicians. Palestine can't.

Boo yah! Her speech to the isreal terrorist lobby was to double-down on that conflict. It sat in stark contrast to what Bernie Sanders did.

[EmperorIng]

Yuck, people actually watch The Young Turks? C'mon man, have some standards. Even Thom "rambles for 10 minutes straight every video while being loudly cut off by his own music" Hartmann is better.

EDIT:

To supply something substantive, I encourage you to read this illuminating interview with the author of Hillbilly Elegy for a frank discussion of how both the Left and Right in America have let down the poor white working class, which has allowed [Comrade?] Trump an opening to the white house. Salient points: traditional GOP economic policies, even if they have some positive effects (some which I think they do), have largely ignored this group and offer them little; the political left alternates between smug derision (it's the "safe" group to be prejudiced against) and denying poor groups their moral agency (ie, only the government managing the economy can solve their problems; otherwise they are hopeless). This election emphasizes this prior theme as both candidates take up positions that underline how powerless people are without government leadership to prop them up (which is not an uplifting or encouraging development). It's worth reading for a fresh perspective, as it's pretty easy to play the blame game with voters without turning the finger on yourself (see: Daily Show and its ilk, Slate and Salon, and so forth).

[Giest118]

I have to wonder what, if not Donald Trump, the threshold would be for you people to say, "Okay, yes, Clinton is preferable." I mean, if the Republican party resurrected Adolf Hitler's soul as a baby-eating demon who loudly declared his intention to rip off the arms and legs of everyone on the planet, and his running mate was Zombie Joseph Stalin, would we be getting people saying "You know, if you just listen to Demon Hitler, you'll find he makes a lot of sense"? Or would everybody notice, "Oh wait, that's Adolf Fucking Hitler and Joseph God Damn Stalin. We should probably not do this thing."

Oh wait, no, Hillary had some e-mails or whatever. DEMON HITLER 2016

[Bitter Almonds]

dick cheney is the same as clinton, so I'd probably vote against him. Same with ted cruhz.

[BryanM]

I have to wonder what, if not Donald Trump, the threshold would be for you people to say, "Okay, yes, Clinton is preferable." I mean, if the Republican party resurrected Adolf Hitler's soul as a baby-eating demon who loudly declared his intention to rip off the arms and legs of everyone on the planet, and his running mate was Zombie Joseph Stalin, would we be getting people saying "You know, if you just listen to Demon Hitler, you'll find he makes a lot of sense"? Or would everybody notice, "Oh wait, that's Adolf Fucking Hitler and Joseph God Damn Stalin. We should probably not do this thing."

Oh wait, no, Hillary had some e-mails or whatever. DEMON HITLER 2016

Okay. Let me explain this to you. Once again.

The GOP has been Demon Hitler since Ronald Reagan. You can quibble and say Bush Senior was an okay decent guy, as far as the neolibs go. That they've been Demon Hitler since Richard Cheney was installed as president back in 2000.

Demon Hitler should not even be on the menu. As human beings, we have failed. Completely. Utterly. Failed.

The democratic has failed to protect us from Demon Hitler. So, your logic, involves using the people that have failed to save us against Demon Hitler to save us from Demon Hitler.





Clutching at your pearls and waving a fan in your face and getting hysterical over Demon Hitler is not an argument. Demon Hitler isn't that much worse than Hitler Petite.

I am a one issue voter. That issue is very simple: Where does the candidate in question acquire money from? If Trump and Clinton have the same patrons and owners, people who are my enemy, than they're the same person. Completely. QED.

The threshold to get me to vote for Clinton would be:

1. She has to stop taking money from the people who've bought her.
2. She has to cut off the head of her son-in-law with a knife on live TV.

That is what it'll take for me to accept someone who's spent their entire lives fighting against my interests and goals. Extreme flip-flops require extreme proof.

Trump can say he'll nuke Mexico tomorrow, and I won't care. Trump isn't my guy. What he says and does doesn't matter.

What you say and do matters very much. "Vote for David Koch" is.... gonna be a hard sell on someone who didn't vote for Goldman Sachs back in 2008.

[Mischief Maker]

All right! Hypothetical scenario time! This thread feels like I've jumped into a time machine and traveled back to the year 2000 and gotten into a heated debate with my younger self.

Like this election, the Democrats were running a better-qualified, but completely uncharismatic candidate against a clearly unqualified but entertaining Republican. Al Gore was taking money from a lot of the same donors as Bush jr. And the DNC took part in scummy, yet legal tactics to freeze out a compelling and truly leftist candidate, Ralph Nader (by refusing him a podium at the debates). I grew increasingly frustrated with the messaging of the Democrats that just said bad things about Bush jr. and nothing inspiring about Gore. Finally I was fed up with the establishment and voted Nader.

So! With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight on the presidency of George Bush jr, especially the decisions of the Roberts Supreme Court, did I make the right call?

[Giest118]

I am a one issue voter. That issue is very simple: Where does the candidate in question acquire money from? If Trump and Clinton have the same patrons and owners, people who are my enemy, than they're the same person. Completely. QED.

I'm sure the millions of people who stand to lose basic human rights under a Republican presidency, but not a Democrat presidency, will understand your rather sheltered and narrow view.

[BryanM]

So! With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight on the presidency of George Bush jr, especially the decisions of the Roberts Supreme Court, did I make the right call?

I know you don't feel like you did, but there are a number of things to temper that with:

* You have survivor's bias. You don't know the low points that would have emerged from Gore's legacy. The economic crash of 2007-2008 could have resulted in a Ted Cruz clone (a man colorfully referred to as "The Devil in the Flesh" by Ben Dixon) being president for the last eight years. We could be at war with Iran right now in this alternate timeline.

* Senate Democrats could have blocked the Iraq war from happening, but chose not to.

* Your vote did not matter. Wisconsin, was it? Gave its electoral votes to Gore.

* Your vote did not matter. Florida, was it? Gave its electoral votes to Gore. Got them taken away by the supreme court and election fraud.

The fundamental lesson of 2000 was that we have no power whatsoever, this is not a democracy, and we should do other things with our time instead.

And Gore is still 10,000 times closer to being a human being than the Clintons are.

I grew increasingly frustrated with the messaging of the Democrats that just said bad things about Bush jr. and nothing inspiring about Gore.

This is intentional. If they did that, Democrats would be more likely to win.

They don't want to win too much. They want to win juuuuuust enough that the map isn't completely colored red so can pretend we have a choice. When we do not.



^ 100% by design.

I know you don't feel like you did

Also possibly some survivor's guilt.

It isn't your fault Gore didn't make you want to vote for Gore. That's Gore's fault, not yours.

[Bitter Almonds]

I couldn't vote in 2000... I wasn't a citizen until 2004

[Ed Oscuro]

* You have survivor's bias. You don't know the low points that would have emerged from Gore's legacy. The economic crash of 2007-2008 could have resulted in a Ted Cruz clone (a man colorfully referred to as "The Devil in the Flesh" by Ben Dixon) being president for the last eight years. We could be at war with Iran right now in this alternate timeline.

Oh sure, we all saw Jet Li's The One.

[BryanM]

Oh sure, we all saw Jet Li's The One.

Thanks for telling us who you think would have been president instead of Obama after the democrats held the hot potato of the crash in their hands. Much thoughtful. Much amaze.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ahaha, you're a pretty funny guy. On the one hand you want everybody to know it's not their fault for making a bad choice because who knows, maybe zombie robohitler could have been President, so why should anybody blame themselves if they made a bad choice? On the other hand you adhere to the rather crappy notion that the electorate has moved to different candidates based on careful policy analysis, instead of in blind greed / terror / racism or whatever are the exploitables of the minute. Hasn't watching Trump set the US reputation on fire this year taught you anything?

The One's alternate-history gag about what might happen in four or eight years of a Gore Presidency almost make more sense than believing the recession was going to be blamed in any other ways than the predictable ones - especially in the context of what the people believed back then. A lot more people were voting for Bush because, like Mischief Maker says, they didn't like Gore, not because they had the faintest idea what was going to happen in Afghanistan or Iraq or because they thought that the '90s were coming to an end (but then again, millennialism was a thing...). Conservatives blame Clinton for the recession (and everything else), and liberals blame Bush. We know both parties let it happen, but I feel pretty bad if you still think that voters pay attention to the details. If anything, the political parties pay more attention to their constituents and even spoiler votes, and we know how much that is.

[BulletMagnet]

It isn't your fault Gore didn't make you want to vote for Gore. That's Gore's fault, not yours.

The fact that every media outlet not only mocked him over absolutely everything (Those clothes! That droning voice! Didn't criticize horndog Bill enough!), but quite literally made up "lies" that he had supposedly told (Invented the internet! Love Story! Love Canal! Raised at the Ritz! Had to hire a woman to teach him how to be a man!), while giving Bush a complete pass when, for instance, he messed up his own official numbers during a debate (Gore sighed - totally unpresidential!) certainly didn't help.

And here we are again - That hair! Those pantsuits! That cackle! Whitewater! Vince Foster! Benghazi! Shady uranium deal! Rooting for both the Cubs and Yankees! Meanwhile, her opponent has yet to put out a single number that actually adds up, but we've still got a squeaker on our hands...and the latter still gets to prattle on about how biased everyone is against him without being laughed off the stage. Get that hypothetical beer you've been saving since 2000 ready, apparently you're still plenty thirsty for it.

[BryanM]

The fact that every media outlet not only mocked him over absolutely everything (Those clothes! That droning voice! Didn't criticize horndog Bill enough!), but quite literally made up "lies" that he had supposedly told (Invented the internet! Love Story! Love Canal! Raised at the Ritz! Had to hire a woman to teach him how to be a man!), while giving Bush a complete pass when, for instance, he messed up his own official numbers during a debate (Gore sighed - totally unpresidential!) certainly didn't help.

And here we are again - That hair! Those pantsuits! That cackle! Whitewater! Vince Foster! Benghazi! Shady uranium deal! Rooting for both the Cubs and Yankees!

This is a bit partisan.

The media is a neutral entity with a corporate bias. They don't want to offend viewers, so they refuse to present facts or opinions on anything remotely political. (Everything is wrapped in a "so and so says" burrito.) This is why CNN had a huge boner for a missing plane for 3 months straight. Their disposition is of course to give a little help to the GOP because it would be great if they make an extra $400,000 for themselves.

However what this means is the onus is on the democratic candidate to frame what their opponent really is. Obama and Biden did an okay, not great, but okay job of it.

Kerry and Clinton don't even try. Trump said we should murder people's (terrorist's) families. That we should torture even if it doesn't work. That wages are too high.

Every single time Clinton is on camera, she has 100% control over what she says during that time. If she wants to spend that precious limited resource on how she likes to chill in ceder rapids, or dance, that is her decision. The media, bored voracious monster that it is, can not be blamed for her failure to even attempt to influence them.

I've seen her talk for 4 minutes straight without saying anything. It's incredible. Breathtaking.

She would perform better if the only sentence she said from now until the election was "Trump said wages are too high" like a pokémon.

On the other hand you adhere to the rather crappy notion that the electorate has moved to different candidates based on careful policy analysis... but I feel pretty bad if you still think that voters pay attention to the details.

Your grasp of math is... disappointing. Soul crushingly disappointing.

Every cycle democrats run someone to barely tie against the worst person on the planet. Just an additional 3 or 4% would render it impossible for the GOP to ever seat another president again. Forever. That's 0.5 to 2% of the population as a whole.

This isn't rocket science. Trump threw a bone to Cruz's base by picking Pence. Clinton threw a bone to Jeb's base by picking Kaine. Tactical.

Current polling indicates Sanders is +10 Trump, compared to Hillary's +0. If anything, my projections and math are overly pessimistic when it comes to my arguments. A Sanders nomination very likely would have destroyed the current incarnation of the GOP within 12 years. Get them back to the party of Eisenhower.

A Clinton nomination gets Trump elected and all your dreams come true.

That's 0.5 to 2% of the population as a whole.

I know saying 1% of the population isn't human garbage is a radical thing. What can I say. I'm an optimist at heart.

[ED-057]

I have to wonder what, if not Donald Trump, the threshold would be for you people to say, "Okay, yes, Clinton is preferable." I mean, if the Republican party resurrected Adolf Hitler's soul as a baby-eating demon who loudly declared his intention to rip off the arms and legs of everyone on the planet, and his running mate was Zombie Joseph Stalin, would we be getting people saying "You know, if you just listen to Demon Hitler, you'll find he makes a lot of sense"? Or would everybody notice, "Oh wait, that's Adolf Fucking Hitler and Joseph God Damn Stalin. We should probably not do this thing."

THE YEAR WAS 1941 AND WAR WAS BEGINNING.

FDR: What happen!?
STALIN: All your vodka are belong to us. Surrender now and you will being at gulag for short time only. Hohoho!
FDR: Oh dear...
HITLER: Hang on a sec' bro... surrender to me and I will... erm... I mean, that Stalin guy is a bigot!
FDR: Is that true?
STALIN: Da, is true. I also like to torturing Muslims.
CROWD: Torture! Yaayyyyy!!!1
FDR: That sounds mean, maybe we should surrender to Hitler?
WIKILEAKS: Hitler burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on Communists.
HITLER: You knew about that? Damn meddling kids...
HACKERS: Scooby-dooby-doo!
CBS NEWS: Are Julian Assange and Joseph Stalin the same person? "Experts" present new "evidence..."
RT: Hitler wants to start World War 2.
CROWD: World War 2! Yaayyyyy!!!1
HITLER: What are you talking about? LOLOLOL
RT: You invaded Poland.
HITLER: Did not! Wait, I mean... I'm just spreading a little democracy here, it's for their own good.
STALIN: Poland should paying for their own democracy! We can't afford spreading democracy everywhere for free!
CBS NEWS: Is the media treating Hitler unfairly simply because of his deformed penis?
HITLER: Yeah, stop hating me because of my deformed penis, you bigots.
CROWD: Deformed penis! Yaayyyyy!!!1
STALIN: Are you being ready for surrender yet? It's time to make USSR Great Again!
FDR: It's a tough call. I need more time.
BULLETMAGNET: I'm No Fan of Hitler(TM), but Stalin is a poopy head for sure, because of reasons and blah, blah, blah
NADER: We shouldn't surrender to either one of them. End corporate welfare!
POLICE OCCIFER: How'd he escape again? Come on, Ralphy, back to the assylum with you.
GIEST118: Wow, this is a closer contest than I thought it would be! Maybe next time we can see how Hitler fares against Vlad the Impaler.
CROWD: Vlad the Impaler! Yaayyyyy!!!1
FDR: *dies from autoerotic asphixiation*

[BulletMagnet]

The media, bored voracious monster that it is, can not be blamed for her failure to even attempt to influence them.

Read my post again: we're not talking about the media just "not being into" Hillary enough, we're talking about "mainstream" journalists literally making shit up about her. For decades, almost completely without correction, to the point that a huge swath of voters by now consider this nonsense factual - and, by extension, since The BoogeyClinton has somehow still not been jailed or executed, that the entire system is so corrupted that nothing short of an axe-wielding clown like Trump can "fix" it.

Remember, kids: Whitewater was not given life by the RNC or Fox News, but the Supah Dupah Librul New York Times, which to this day still employs Maureen Dowd, perhaps the most fatuous and visibly unhinged anti-Ciinton (Bill included) columnist ever to put pen to paper, while Ultruh Librul MSNBC keeps Chris Matthews on staff even after he, just for starters, criticized Gore for having too many buttons on his suits, allowed Gennifer Flowers (as he hit on her during the interview) to claim that Hillary was a secret lesbian who'd had people killed, and even in recent years referred to Hillary as "Nurse Ratched" on air. And those are the "liberal" examples.

At this point, Hillary could do backflips on command and 1) She'd still be savaged (hell, even today she's somehow simultaneously panned for both her unwavering devotion to being terrible no matter what, and her cowardly, focus-grouped about-faces to keep her numbers up), and 2) Trump and his lackeys would still complain that he's the real victim of negatively biased coverage, even as his latest claim that he was always against Iraq goes completely unchallenged.

[Ed Oscuro]

Word to the wise: May 3, 1995. "Sliders," episode titled: "The Weaker Sex." You will not be disappoint.

It's your chance to see Gimli, Pushkin, or Sallah (or all three?) running for office in a world where Clinton is President. Yes, just Clinton.

On the other hand you adhere to the rather crappy notion that the electorate has moved to different candidates based on careful policy analysis... but I feel pretty bad if you still think that voters pay attention to the details.

Your grasp of math is... disappointing. Soul crushingly disappointing.

Let me echo BulletMagnet here a moment, and let's backtrack to what set me to being a killjoy against your admittedly always entertaining devil-may-care posting habits. Perhaps you're more in agreement with me than you think.

(Irrelevant point: I personally kind of enjoy the Clinton-Kaine dynamic. Watching him slouching astride a railing in Pennsylvania and nodding eagerly as she makes dry witticisms reminds me of high school debate kids. The idea that America might elect a couple "wonks" or nerds (or whatever other derogatory term should apply) makes me kind of hopeful, but mostly I actually just enjoy this just as much as the traditional apple pie and dumb jock / fake coyboy charades we've been getting from both parties for...well damn, literally centuries now. Still, that's just my personal appetite for diversity talking, and doesn't matter much for the election.)

I took issue with a couple things: First, the impression I get from your posts that if you're not voting outside the system you're a sellout and you're wasting a vote. We have a good platform for the Democratic party thanks to Bernie. If you question Hillary's committment to the platform, then hold her feet to the fire. You can't do that from outside looking in. The Bernie Bro I saw speaking at the DemCon said she's getting no honeymoon. That's the new normal.

The second thing is more important though. You've tried to sketch out this alternate history where Gore being president leads to mecha jesusdinohitler being President, and Obama' doesn't get a shot in this alternate universe simply because of the financial meltdown. But now you're trying to tell me that Hillary loses not because of issues but because she's got too much negative and not a high enough likeability factor. I see that as essentially being my point - some people will vote for Obama just for specific policy issues, but a lot of people are looking at these emotional factors. And Obama, even this particular alternate universe Obama, has so much charisma that if he decides to run, and gets the nod, he wins against McCain in '08 and Romney in '12, regardless of what the economy is doing. We'll never know how the dynamics of Gore handing off to Obama would have looked like, but I don't see any particular reason to think it couldn't have happened. But yes, please DNC: Less "not made here" turf policing when it comes to brilliant outsiders like Bernie, and less turkeys.

But ultimately, you're a day later to this "why did Hillary fuck it up by running against Bernie?" party than even Charles Krauthammer, and he had to come by this realization by way of Charles Murray.

[EmperorIng]

One thing that is truly mystifying about the much-touted Democratic Platform is an explicit call to end the federal ban on funding abortions. It really makes no sense, considering that the original "Hyde Amendment" was a compromise to make sure gridlocks between pro-life politicians and pro-choice politicians were kept to a minimum. Even now, a majority of public opinion supports said amendment, and a considerable portion of Democrats. Tim Kaine himself flip-flopped 3 times on the issue, going from saying "I'm opposed to it" to "I'm opposed, but I'll support it on Hillary's platform" to now "I've always been for the amendment, but I could signal my support to repealing it if the conditions are right, lol." In the course of a month.

If the Democrats really wanted to bring evangelicals unhappy with Trump into their tent and boost their numbers, why did they do something so needlessly incendiary to keep them away? Was it worth it for the brownie points of a small vocal group of Warren ass-kissers on twitter? Talk about inept.

[cj iwakura]

I did everything from voting for Sanders to volunteering for Sanders(which was a total shitshow and the most poorly run grassroots campaign ever), but I know better than to be so salty over his loss to vote for a fascist instead. If Trump wins, we're basically inviting the start of WWIII.

Hillary's no saint, but this is easily the 'less of two evils' situation. (Also, her having actually held a political office is a slight bonus.)

[Cee]

I did everything from voting for Sanders to volunteering for Sanders(which was a total shitshow and the most poorly run grassroots campaign ever), but I know better than to be so salty over his loss to vote for a fascist instead. If Trump wins, we're basically inviting the start of WWIII.

Hillary's no saint, but this is easily the 'less of two evils' situation. (Also, her having actually held a political office is a slight bonus.)

1. Who exactly will trump be starting ww3 with? (hilary has wayyyyy more chance of doing this btw in the form of proxy wars + continuing antagonizing Russia)

2. What exactly do you think Fascism is? because trumps politics aren't not even close so one can only assume you are one of those over emotional silly buzzword chanting types that dumbs every topic down to "hurrr love vs hate mannn".

(ah you're a "bernout" makes sense).

[Giest118]

1. Who exactly will trump be starting ww3 with?

The country of residence of the first random asshole who tweets at him.