I guess we need a thread in which we re-re-re-re-re-litigate Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election
Sounds like a hoot, Iāll get right on that.
We donāt have to if Biden wins the primary, weāll get a replay in real time. Wonāt that be fun.
Got to go way back
SC straight up stole the 2000 election
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Yeah, I think one of the best outcomes would be if everyone got put on trial. Ok, letās investigate Biden and his son, so long as we get to investigate Trump and his family, whatever wrongdoing is uncovered will be punished and we can all move on.
Liz is a boss. I love Bernie butā¦ she just seems bulletproof. Sheās so articulate and on point.
But makes pretty bad campaign decisions like the cringeworthy faux beer drinker video and the whole native American thing.
Itās weird, because for their age (early 70s) my parents are minimally racist. Like they are inclined to buy into racial stereotypes, or use coded language, but when I point it out and explain it to them they show remorse and stop doing it. My mom gets extremely upset and shows a lot of emotion about whatās going on at the border and genuinely canāt fathom how this administration can bring themselves to do that to other humans. I have to keep explaining that this administration is full of monsters, and tell her to think of them like the Nazis.
My Dad is a little more brainwashed by decades of Fox News, which he stopped watching a few years ago - now he watches CNN. There are certain right wing snap reactions that he always gives, but he does yield to logic when you push him. But heās huge on, āLet that nice man finish his answer, how dare you cut him off and yell at him???ā every time a GOP person is stalling and wasting time in a Congressional hearing.
On the other hand, he came to like Bernie in 2016 without any real pushing from me. He heard him speak and liked him. One of his historical issues with the Dems is that they donāt get anything done. When I was a kid heād tell me, āAt least when the Republicans are in charge SOMEONE gets a tax cut. The Democrats never get anything done for anybody.ā
Mind you, it was never HIS tax cut. Also on foreign policy, heās way more hawkish. Heās of that mentality that things are simple, we shouldnāt take shit from anyone, go bomb the hell out of him. Itās ironic, because thatās like the opposite of how he deals with bosses, coworkers, other people in day to day life, etcā¦
Thatās the thing, he hates McConnell from what I can tell, he sees the GOP for the corrupt evil thing it isā¦ He sees theyāre only out for the 1%ers. Now, this may be because Iāve drilled it into him for a few years, highlighted their logical failings, highlighted their hypocrisy, etcā¦ But it definitely lead to some weird moments where I realize I havenāt successfully de-programmed all of the Fox News bullshit he consumed over the years yet.
Yeah, very true. Getting my Dad off Fox News just in time was key. My mom was easier, because she never consumed a lot of news or political programming. She was a single-issue voter on abortion, but she has tons of empathy for people so showing her examples of people the GOP was making suffer (starting on the topic of healthcare before 2008) turned her into a reliable Democratic vote over the last several cycles. She voted Obama-Obama-Hillary and for every Dem on the ballot at the Congressional level and straight Dem up and down the ballot in 2018.
Iām pretty sure my Dad was Obama-Romney-Johnson, I know he went for Obama once for healthcare reform, but Iām pretty sure he was pissed off that his costs went up and went back the other way in 2012. He was completely incapable of pulling the lever for Hillary based on 25 years of right wing smear campaigns, and there was no way he was voting for Trump eitherā¦
Any way, long post without a lot of pointā¦ sometimes itās just oddly surprising when certain things register more with like his long-term programming rather than his last few years of loathing Trump. Heās still inclined to give him a āfairā chance on a new scandal rather than just automatically assuming the worst. I had to go back and forth with him on the Ukraine thing and explain that they were illegally supressing the whistle blower. He suggested it was possible the whistle blower was actually blowing the whistle on Biden, which obviously makes no sense in terms of timingā¦ but what finally got him to stop and connect the dots was, āDo you really think the Trump administration would block a whistle blower report that made them look good and/or Biden look bad???ā
He literally stopped, thought for like 10 seconds, and you could tell he changed his mind - but didnāt readily admit it.
I then explained that if Biden did something wrong, he should be held accountableā¦ and that there was nothing wrong with Biden being investigated for something, IF there was potential wrongdoing there, but using the power of the office was wrong. That if Trump asked McConnell to launch a select committee to look into Biden, I wouldnāt have a problem with thatā¦ Like, I think it would turn up nothing and be a waste of time and amount to nothing more than an attempt to smear an opponent, but at least it would be legal and in bounds. And that select committee could then try to get more info from Ukraine, and it might even cause Ukraine to relaunch an investigationā¦ but more likely weād just find out that there was no there there, and then the GOP would use the committee as a smear campaign for the entire election cycle. But, again, at least it wouldnāt be an abuse of power.
I guess itās also worth pointing out that, growing up in Delaware, my Dad has always hated Biden - heās always thought of him as sort of the typical slick, fast-talking politician who you canāt trust. He also hated the way he handled Bork, and thought it was really unfair to Bork how Biden was so mean to him (LOL, yeah weāve had that argument a time or three). So heās got some anti-Biden biases there, too.
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THIS is how Mueller really failed us. Like, he was never going to indict himā¦ and while I have my disagreements with that, I am ultimately okay with it. But not forcing Trump to sit and answer questions was a total bullshit cop out.
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I actually think Bernie and Liz both connect with more conservative voters than we realizeā¦ and this is why:
Much of the right is just a cult. Itās identity and Go Team Red! But in reality, the GOP is doing nothing for most of these voters and when they hear a populist on the left talking about giving them healthcare, higher wages, higher taxes on the rich, etc, they respond to that (well, a few of them do).
My center-right NeverTrump father loved Bernie in 2016 as a result of seeing him in debates and hearing him speak. I think a lot of these people deep down knew neither side was doing shit for them, so just identified with the patriotism, everything is simple, strong leadership, identity cult. When they believe a Bernie or Warren is going to fight for them and put money in their pockets, theyāre poachable.
And we only have to poach a tiny % of them to make a huge difference.
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The way this Ukraine story is going to turn into a narrative about Joe Bidenās corruption is going to rustle my jimmies to dangerous levels. And I despise Joe Biden
This is a stone lock to happen.
We got about 60% turnout in 2016 and got 48-46% in the popular vote. We need about a 6% popular vote win to basically (not quite) guarantee an electoral college win, assuming thereās no hacking/vote changing.
So thatās 28.8% of the electorate to 27.6% of the electorate in 2016. Add another 5% in turnout, and give Dems 80% of it because there arenāt going to be many Trump voters coming out as new voters IMOā¦ So add 4% to Dems, 1% to Trump. Thatās 32.8% to 28.6%. That makes it 50.46% to 44%, which should do it.
So 65% turnout is the number if we take 80% of the new votes. If we only take 60% of the new votes, 70% turnout gets us about a 4.5 point margin - a likely win, but not a guarantee. Not a curb stomping. 75% turnout gets us 50.4 to 44.8, weāre still not home free on the electoral college. 77% turnout gets us the 6-point margin that makes us totally safe in the electoral college.
As a point of reference, Obama won by 7.2% in 2008 and took the electoral college 365 to 173. Iām not sure that counts as a curb stomping, but itās pretty close. Demographics have changed, though. He didnāt get Arizona - it wasnāt even close, although it was McCain he was running against so that was probably worth 4-5 points there. He also lost Georgia by over 5 points, and that could be competitive in 2020 (it would be in a trouncing scenario, at least). But he won North Carolina and Iowa.
I think the best case scenario is a win by like 8%, and flipping PA, WI, MI, AZ, GA, IA, NC, FL. Thatās 355-183, still less of an electoral college win than Obama got. The donāt wake me up from this sweet, sweet dream scenario is that plus two or more of OH, KS, TX, MO.
But we should probably factor in 3+ points worth of legal or semi-legal tampering in all of the states on that list where there is a Republican governor and secretary of state, and thatās beyond my pay grade of trying to correlated to a national margin of victory.
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How are people still operating under this logic in a post-Trump world? Trump admitted to obstruction of justice on national television.
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Democratic voters judge their candidates by different standards than Republican voters judge theirs.
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This.
We arenāt living in the 70s/80s/90s any more. We have entered a new era of politics where mere law and fact are of much lesser importance than winning/retaining power. The emergence of growing economies in despotic China (manufacturing) and Russia (energy) have seen to that.
No Trump supporter will ever gaf about him breaking the law.
This is true, but all the rules will change if Pelosi takes a stand and Dems impeach him. Whether or not that will change the game, or simply be a new game that we continue losing in because nothing matters is unknownā¦ The variable is the reaction of the majority of the country to months of televised impeachment hearings.
The same is true on a smaller scale for using inherent contempt. Arrest the DNI for inherent contempt and hold him for a few days, the GOP will scream bloody murder and Dems can just say, āThe law says he has to turn this whistle blower report over. The instant he does, heās a free man.ā Letās see how that news cycle plays. Then lets use inherent contempt again the next time someone violates a subpoena or refuses to answer a question under subpoena.
House Dems need to stop growling and showing their teeth and actually bite. Until then, everything you wrote is right. Once they show a willingness to actually use their power, we enter a new unknown dynamic. In the mean time, every failure to do so does actually strengthen Trump as you wrote because heās proving that the boundaries for impeachable conduct do not apply to anything heās done so far, thus, that is all permissible conduct he can use to his advantage to consolidate power.
I think I said this back on 2p2 a while ago, but Russia is the model weāre headed towards. Weāll still have āelectionsā but the GOP will always win them just like Putin always wins his. Maybe theyāll nuke term limits, or maybe itāll just be Donald J. Trump ā Donald Trump Jr. ā Ivanka Trump, etcā¦ Theyāll crack down more and more on the media, and pretty soon everything will be slanted enough that people donāt really know the degree to which their elections are fixed. Theyāll crack down on protesters, and eventually people like us will be keeping our mouths shut, staying under ground, or moving to Canada. Weāll become even more of an oligarchic kleptocracy than we already are, akin to Russia.
But if you choose the blue pill, you can convince yourself you still live in a democracy with elections and a government working in your interestā¦ if you choose the red pill, youāre in for a life of misery. Most will choose the blue pill.
If Trump wins in 2020, I think this is going to be a near certainty (90%+ chance itās where we go, if Iām being optimistic about our chances of fading it). If Trump loses, maybe itās a coin flip. We need democracy reform to fade it.
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