Jeff Rosenstock just deleted a magnificent tweet "Cab driver just told me 'well, at least Donald Trump can't be bought by the proletariat'". Sadly, he's not famous enough for this to have been screencap'd in the 30 seconds it was up.
Funny. I exhaled through my nose a bit.
I love the general assertion that he can't be bought, as if the Kochs haven't got an order of magnitude more money than he's ever seen.
What I find interesting about this election cycle is that the GOP and DNC have swapped places. Usually, the GOP is the party that is all "fall in line" with the chosen candidate, while the DNC is the party that is all "fall in love" with a candidate.
"Better of two evils" hasn't really been working out for us anyhow. I'm not super impressed with that rationale anymore. There's such a concerted effort required at this point to untangle the gerrymandered mess in each state and clean out Congress that it's kind of a bad joke. Bernie in the White House would help because he'll make those issues stand out far better than Obama has or Clinton would bother to, but if he gets thrown under the bus by the DNC then I'm ambivalent. My caring isn't going to bring critical mass. My not caring isn't going to sabotage it. "If you only voted then..." sounds great on a poster or in a speech but statistically we've got a long, long, long data set which demonstrates it doesn't happen. People would rather let the planet implode than admit that they're wrong and in a lot of cases have been wrong all their lives.
Apparently, you'd rather have someone who's actively against the changes you want than someone who's at least vocally in support with questionable follow through. Can't you see how there's a problem with that line of thinking?
He subscribes to an odd subsection of Marxism that believes we must cut the fiscal safety net for the poor in order to create unrest and therefor revolution.
There's a word for that. It's "Accelerationism", and it's generally despised by most Marxists as its impossible to tell from satire.
Bernie in the White House would help because he'll make those issues stand out far better than Obama has or Clinton would bother to, but if he gets thrown under the bus by the DNC then I'm ambivalent.
Is this just you really saying if Bernie doesn't win.
Not sure what you would consider "Not getting thrown under the bus by the DNC" that would also include him losing? If the voters reject him does that mean he was thrown under a bus? What if the DNC gives him a nice prime time speaking slot at the convention?
If you, for one second, even consider voting for Trump as opposed to abstaining because your candidate of choice doesn't get the nomination, regardless of which candidate that is, you seriously need to reexamine your priorities.
Trump is a narcissistic monster feeding on racist hatred and jingoism. Any of the GOP candidates would be marginally better, and none are in the arena of 'viable politician who won't attempt to turn the country into a barren, plutocratic hellscape'.
I'm leaning towards Bernie myself, but even if he wins it's going to be a really difficult task for him to accomplish anything because of the do-nothing tantrums the GOP congress has been throwing the past decade, and will likely continue. We need not only a Democrat win, but a major congressional sweep the next election.
Actually the best chance for a Dem sweep is the republicans nominating Trump, so you should encourage your republican friends to vote for him in the primary if you want a Dem Sweep in the senate :-p
Bernie in the White House would help because he'll make those issues stand out far better than Obama has or Clinton would bother to, but if he gets thrown under the bus by the DNC then I'm ambivalent.
Is this just you really saying if Bernie doesn't win.
Not sure what you would consider "Not getting thrown under the bus by the DNC" that would also include him losing? If the voters reject him does that mean he was thrown under a bus? What if the DNC gives him a nice prime time speaking slot at the convention?
He's already being thrown under the bus by the DNC by having a very small number of debates (far fewer than the GOP), utilizing their connections in media to keep him barely mentioned in the mainstream press (And yes, this is a real thing. Time Warner and the Clintons are buddies.) And so on. Are we going to pretend politics in the US is fair or can we acknowledge the bullshit that goes on.
There's a reason Bernie's poll numbers jump dramatically every couple of weeks. It's because he's not getting national coverage so he tends to only become popular where he's personally been or where his volunteer support is particularly strong.
He's the only candidate calling for bipartisanship and he's the only one who's acknowledging how badly gerrymandered our Congress is and he's the only one talking about the fact that Europe is kicking our asses on not only human rights, but health outcomes and so on.
He's a reality based candidate. The others are selling various products which don't resemble the truth much.
Anyway it's circular to keep saying so but there's not a chance I'd help put a phony like Hillary in that office. If the electorate's not gonna wake up then I've no trouble voting Trump and sounding the air horn. If Bush didn't already wake 'em up then clearly we need to go deeper.
8 years is a long time but my kids will live a good deal longer than that. No milque toast non-reform from some phony Democrat appeals to me in the slightest. I think that's more dangerous than letting people see what half this country really thinks ought to be done, because that's Trump.
Honestly I think we're too polarized as a nation to recover without some serious unrest or some kind of mass secession, but it's not the sort of thing you wish for in your own lifetime or your kids'.
I agree that Congress also has to be cleaned up, and with all the gerrymandering I think it's going to be an insanely difficult task. Bernie at least will keep beating that war drum.
Hillary is at least as narcissistic as any of the GOP "hopefuls" and that includes Trump. I don't consider her a Democrat at all. No, her phony and ultimately fruitless stances on this or that don't sway me.
Conspiracies are fun and all, but I'm pretty sure the real answer is that Trump is running because he's a delusional nutbag who lives in his own reality. 70% that and 30% publicity stunt.
Oh sure I truly doubt he's there as a spoiler in Hillary's favor. I just said I've heard that a few times now. Seems a popular theory, like Ruffas said.
Hate to say this but the Debates have not been helping Bernie. First one, actually helped Clinton a lot, and after that no one is going to care about the Democratic debates until the clowns in the republican one are no longer pulling views. The only people watching the D debate are generally the supporters of a particular candidate cheering on their side (maybe some republicans hate watching). With the clown car that is the republican side the Democratic debate is generally boring for the average voter.
I'm not even actively watching Debates and I'm a political junkie.
I think it depends on what you're looking for. I agree that pundits can tear Bernie up for not seeming polished and slick like the others are. Personally, I'm not looking for a spit shined robot and neither are an increasingly large number of his supporters.
I do agree that a preponderance of US "voters" are finding the Dem debates boring, because apparently flushing the country down the toilet is preferable to being bored by all that boring adult politics stuff. This is where we're at as a nation, intellectually. When's that new game system coming out again?
He's already being thrown under the bus by the DNC by having a very small number of debates (far fewer than the GOP), utilizing their connections in media to keep him barely mentioned in the mainstream press (And yes, this is a real thing. Time Warner and the Clintons are buddies.) And so on. Are we going to pretend politics in the US is fair or can we acknowledge the bullshit that goes on.
Really? Putting aside that I heard this exact same thing from the Libertarians last time with Ron Paul, if I speak to people I know through work at various outlets in the US, and a different answer than you expect(or want, or need) comes back, what would you say?
This isn't about you, or Sanders. It's just that having seen how the sausage is made, at length, pretty much any media conspiracy theory immediately makes me very skeptical. Just the sheer size of it would make it nearly impossible, without considering the types of people who tend to end up in this sort of career. Or the fact that it's so similar to every other media conspiracy theory I've heard, bred of media illiteracy and the need to export blame, to maintain the absurd illusion of infallibility in preferred candidates spurred on by the tribalism of modern politics.
Time Warner is a huge campaign contributor of the Clintons.
I know media is your pet issue and sorry, but 90%+ of all media outlets in the country owned by 6 megacorporations does not strike me as a fertile field for dissenting opinions regardless of however much diversity there might appear to be in the trenches. Every so often I'll see an Op Ed praising Obama on a FOX website, but it sure as shit is a rarity.
It hasn't even got to be deliberately coordinated to any great extent. Anyone who has spent significant time working in a large corporation (maybe this is US specific, I wouldn't really know) knows how a mono-culture can easily form even when there are plenty of dissenters who aren't especially happy with the overall direction. At the end of the day people want to keep getting paychecks.
The president isn't responsible for any of these things. The president's party probably matters more than any promise he/she makes.
President can pass through or block congress. President can talk on TV.
That's basically it. Congress holds all the cards. The President can just refuse to let the game go forward. A GOP president, no matter WHO it is, would be ruin.
Time Warner is a huge campaign contributor of the Clintons.
Really? Because publically available donor information says otherwise. In fact, the last time I can find donations to Clinton from Time Warner is during the race with Obama in 2008-9. During the current cycle, they did not contribute to her campaign as an organization. Time warner is listed as a big donor - but that figure includes Time Warner Employees and Employee's Families.
Though there is a lot of noise from Bernie Supporters who go to opensecrets.org, look at the number on the page for Clinton's campaign donations, and don't look any further, it doesn't bear out under scrutiny.
Nobody, apparently, has bothered to check if she's actually on the recipient list of Time Warner's political efforts, they just see a hundred K on her top donors list - which is peanuts to a political campaign, by the way, not a "huge campaign contributor", and barely puts them in the top ten - and never bother to look any further, because it confirms what they already thought.
I know media is your pet issue and sorry, but 90%+ of all media outlets in the country owned by 6 megacorporations does not strike me as a fertile field for dissenting opinions regardless of however much diversity there might appear to be in the trenches.
Really? Then explain to me how that would stop any of the hundreds of people involved, for whom revealing a network or organisation doing top-down manipulation of their output to influence a political campaign would be a career-making story, are being kept silent. All it would take would be a little blood in the water, a little bit of evidence, thrown by ONE person, and it would be a media feeding frenzy, and yet, nothing. Silence. How are these people with an extraordinarily clear and compelling incentive to speak out being coerced into doing so?
You can say "Oh, but corporate culture of silence" all you like - the whole "People just want to keep getting paycheques" thing kind of breaks down when speaking out would mean not only mean a payday that makes your regular one look like peanuts, but also industry-wide renown, and going forward, essentially the ability to work wherever you want with whatever numbers please you on the paycheques that follow. Even if there is an incentive to keep quiet - the incentive to speak out is orders of magnitude greater. And even if you think there's some omerta-like code among the traditional media(there isn't), there's always outlets like VICE, who would pay a metric shitload of money to get an exclusive like that.
In the end, you imply a conspiracy that touches practically every level of the industry, involving practically every person in it, so grand in scale that it practically boggles the mind. It doesn't matter if I'm in the trenches, or in a boardroom, or halfway up Murdoch's arse mining for gold, what you propose is fucking absurd unless you've got some serious proof. And if you do? Well, I've got a career that could do with a career-making story, by all means, don't keep it to yourself.
Comments
I love the general assertion that he can't be bought, as if the Kochs haven't got an order of magnitude more money than he's ever seen.
This embarrassment to humanity a potential president? How? Why!?
Also what makes you think the republicans are going to win?
Not sure what you would consider "Not getting thrown under the bus by the DNC" that would also include him losing? If the voters reject him does that mean he was thrown under a bus? What if the DNC gives him a nice prime time speaking slot at the convention?
Trump is a narcissistic monster feeding on racist hatred and jingoism. Any of the GOP candidates would be marginally better, and none are in the arena of 'viable politician who won't attempt to turn the country into a barren, plutocratic hellscape'.
I'm leaning towards Bernie myself, but even if he wins it's going to be a really difficult task for him to accomplish anything because of the do-nothing tantrums the GOP congress has been throwing the past decade, and will likely continue. We need not only a Democrat win, but a major congressional sweep the next election.
There's a reason Bernie's poll numbers jump dramatically every couple of weeks. It's because he's not getting national coverage so he tends to only become popular where he's personally been or where his volunteer support is particularly strong.
He's the only candidate calling for bipartisanship and he's the only one who's acknowledging how badly gerrymandered our Congress is and he's the only one talking about the fact that Europe is kicking our asses on not only human rights, but health outcomes and so on.
He's a reality based candidate. The others are selling various products which don't resemble the truth much.
Anyway it's circular to keep saying so but there's not a chance I'd help put a phony like Hillary in that office. If the electorate's not gonna wake up then I've no trouble voting Trump and sounding the air horn. If Bush didn't already wake 'em up then clearly we need to go deeper.
8 years is a long time but my kids will live a good deal longer than that. No milque toast non-reform from some phony Democrat appeals to me in the slightest. I think that's more dangerous than letting people see what half this country really thinks ought to be done, because that's Trump.
Honestly I think we're too polarized as a nation to recover without some serious unrest or some kind of mass secession, but it's not the sort of thing you wish for in your own lifetime or your kids'.
I agree that Congress also has to be cleaned up, and with all the gerrymandering I think it's going to be an insanely difficult task. Bernie at least will keep beating that war drum.
Hillary is at least as narcissistic as any of the GOP "hopefuls" and that includes Trump. I don't consider her a Democrat at all. No, her phony and ultimately fruitless stances on this or that don't sway me.
I'm not even actively watching Debates and I'm a political junkie.
I do agree that a preponderance of US "voters" are finding the Dem debates boring, because apparently flushing the country down the toilet is preferable to being bored by all that boring adult politics stuff. This is where we're at as a nation, intellectually. When's that new game system coming out again?
This isn't about you, or Sanders. It's just that having seen how the sausage is made, at length, pretty much any media conspiracy theory immediately makes me very skeptical. Just the sheer size of it would make it nearly impossible, without considering the types of people who tend to end up in this sort of career. Or the fact that it's so similar to every other media conspiracy theory I've heard, bred of media illiteracy and the need to export blame, to maintain the absurd illusion of infallibility in preferred candidates spurred on by the tribalism of modern politics.
I know media is your pet issue and sorry, but 90%+ of all media outlets in the country owned by 6 megacorporations does not strike me as a fertile field for dissenting opinions regardless of however much diversity there might appear to be in the trenches. Every so often I'll see an Op Ed praising Obama on a FOX website, but it sure as shit is a rarity.
It hasn't even got to be deliberately coordinated to any great extent. Anyone who has spent significant time working in a large corporation (maybe this is US specific, I wouldn't really know) knows how a mono-culture can easily form even when there are plenty of dissenters who aren't especially happy with the overall direction. At the end of the day people want to keep getting paychecks.
President can pass through or block congress. President can talk on TV.
That's basically it. Congress holds all the cards. The President can just refuse to let the game go forward. A GOP president, no matter WHO it is, would be ruin.
Though there is a lot of noise from Bernie Supporters who go to opensecrets.org, look at the number on the page for Clinton's campaign donations, and don't look any further, it doesn't bear out under scrutiny.
Nobody, apparently, has bothered to check if she's actually on the recipient list of Time Warner's political efforts, they just see a hundred K on her top donors list - which is peanuts to a political campaign, by the way, not a "huge campaign contributor", and barely puts them in the top ten - and never bother to look any further, because it confirms what they already thought. Really? Then explain to me how that would stop any of the hundreds of people involved, for whom revealing a network or organisation doing top-down manipulation of their output to influence a political campaign would be a career-making story, are being kept silent. All it would take would be a little blood in the water, a little bit of evidence, thrown by ONE person, and it would be a media feeding frenzy, and yet, nothing. Silence. How are these people with an extraordinarily clear and compelling incentive to speak out being coerced into doing so?
You can say "Oh, but corporate culture of silence" all you like - the whole "People just want to keep getting paycheques" thing kind of breaks down when speaking out would mean not only mean a payday that makes your regular one look like peanuts, but also industry-wide renown, and going forward, essentially the ability to work wherever you want with whatever numbers please you on the paycheques that follow.
Even if there is an incentive to keep quiet - the incentive to speak out is orders of magnitude greater. And even if you think there's some omerta-like code among the traditional media(there isn't), there's always outlets like VICE, who would pay a metric shitload of money to get an exclusive like that.
In the end, you imply a conspiracy that touches practically every level of the industry, involving practically every person in it, so grand in scale that it practically boggles the mind. It doesn't matter if I'm in the trenches, or in a boardroom, or halfway up Murdoch's arse mining for gold, what you propose is fucking absurd unless you've got some serious proof. And if you do? Well, I've got a career that could do with a career-making story, by all means, don't keep it to yourself.
Unless you know something Fivethirtyeight doesn't.