TV is for people who canât afford the rest of the letters of âtelevisionâ.
Just look at how many times this very website has mentioned him in the past week. He is inescapable.
Now think how many times Bernie Sanders has been mentioned anywhere.
Iâm a little leery of the âtelevision is for dumbs, reading is for smartsâ trope. There was an era where television news was the leading edge of oversimplifying and caricaturing the world for profit, but today the âinternet echo chamberâ is just as good - if not a better - at distorting, exaggerating and dumbifying political discourse. I mean sure, I read: I read my Facebook feed, which tells me all about how climate change is made up by jewish bankers, and the cultural marxists have a plan to enslave all white people.
That said, if you overlook the dated âTV vs. Readingâ dichotomy, the observations about Trumpâs relationship to the media landscape are pretty insightful.
HBO begs to differ.
I mention Bernie all the time! 
Trump is having a mid-life crisis.
He was bored with business, so he got into show businessâŚbut then he realized that the contestants on his reality show were enjoying it more than he wasâŚ
So why not be the star contestant, in the biggest reality tv show there is?
I donât think thatâs the point.
I think itâs that Donald Trump is copying what makes ârealityâ TV and sensationalist news media so successfulâŚand that is that they exploit flaws in our psychology for the greater bad.
Thatâs the guy whoâs running for Vice President, right?
We have a whole thread for Bernie but T rump is is admittedly good train wreck journalism and while I am all for Bernie but knowing what this dickweed and his true believers are up is good to know.
I rhink thats no accident. Compared to Clinton, Sanders says some amazingly reasonable things. He paints a picture that makes sense to people. But those would cut into the corporate bottom line, and thereâs nothing Clinton can say to compete with that. So itâs GOT to be the Trumpster, who says so many unreasonable things, he makes Clinton sound like the only possible alternative choice. Trump isnt there to spoil the field for the repiblicans, hes thete to spoil the chances of anyone listening to Bernie Sanders.
They would! The term âtelevisionâ is at least a still-applicable metaphor, when compared to their later âhome box officeâ.
I suppose I agree with that, but how do you get from that to this:
Isnât every voice an alternative? It seems that the less similar it is, the stronger of an alternative it makes. I am not clear how Trump being a trainwreck would make Clinton sound more reasonable than anybody else.
B/c if thereâs even a chance of Trump winning, a lot of liberals would rather go with the more centrist and recognizable Clinton who might peel away some independents and conservatives than the far left Sanders who will turn off all conservatives and many independents. Or at least I think that is the assumption.
Even if Trump were to win, he would put himself out of a job very quickly. His views sound like a (disturbed) seven-year-oldâs idea of what being President should be. Much of what he proposes is not even legal, and isnât going to be.
I wonder if people might be barking up the wrong tree with regards to election process. If somebody seems unqualified for the job, then popular perception of them is not going to enable them to perform it within acceptable margins. Whether or not I would vote for Trump or Clinton is based upon their own skills, not comparing them to anyone else.
Say that to George W. Bush. 
Realistically, in a lot of situations, your first choice isnât available and you have to make do with what is at hand. Elections are like that. If someone is a very qualified president but isnât really in the running, it doesnât necessarily make a whole lot of sense to write them in.
Yup. The lovely thing about our democracy is that weâre constantly voting for the lesser of two evils.
Oh, waitâŚthat sucks, doesnât it?
The president doesnât have to be competent at anything, because the president does not actually run the government. At their most important they set general priorities for other much smarter and well-qualified underlings to execute. But most of the time they simply rubber-stamp the decisions that have been generated by bureaucratic processes, like taking a test where theyâve already been given all the best answers.
In short, the government runs on autopilot. The president can push the stick around and appear to be driving, but itâs not really them setting the course.
I didnât need an explanation of the job. My point was that filling a job position is functionally different than a popularity contest.
