Just more drudgery to get on with, huh? Like shoving food in your mouth to eat, or having sex because its your spousal duty?
Look, there’s umpteen million people who don’t vote at all. Someone needs to give them hope that maybe, just maybe, things will get better, something to excite them for the future. Trump did that for his base and those folks came out of the woodwork - many had never even voted before. Hillary did not do that. She didn’t offer any new vision or direction, just more of the same. Bernie did it, but the Dems contrived against him. We can argue all day, but here we are. I’m not looking for entertainment. I’m looking for someone who can offer some hope for a better tomorrow and a better earth for my kids and grandkids to inherit.
I agree in principle, but most eligible voters are not what we’d call “high information” ones (assuming they vote at all). American presidential elections are popularity contests where the candidate’s charisma and appeal to base emotion play a significant part.
The GOP is adept at finding and cultivating candidates who have those talents, where the Dems just sort of hope that their rock star candidate will just turn up. Sometimes the Dems succeed (Obama and Bill Clinton) but most of the time they get unexciting and hard-to-like stiffs (Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary Clinton).
What worries me is that it’s summer of 2018 and the Dems still haven’t trotted out their show pony candidates for 2020. My unease is such that I still think there’s a small chance they might try to run Hillary again.
I really can’t imagine she wants anything to do with running for President ever again. 
I’d like to hope so, but a joint statement from both her and the DNC that she will absolutely not be on the ticket in 2020 would go a long way toward making me and a lot of others feel more confident about the party’s attitude.
With all these shell corporations that hide who is involved, I wonder how much we’ll ever know about his finances. Enough to know he’s up to his eyeballs in dirty dealings, I suppose, but we know that already, really.
The idea that the Russians started cultivating him as an asset in the '80s, not for anything in particular, but just as a useful resource, really doesn’t seem the least bit far-fetched to me at this point.
If Trump and much of his team are not found guilty after all this American democratic institutions will have been seriously undermined. And it is not obvious that they will be.
actually what’s critical here is they couldn’t directly go after her accounts but targeted the DNC for hopefully the other side of email replies with her by senior staff like the chairman (which worked, they got his secretary to click through a phishing email and give them her password to her gmail account)
so this is literally Watergate 2 - a group of criminals break into the DNC at the behest of a republican candidate - the twist is it is “virtual” in the 21st century
now as far as what Russia has on Trump to make him kiss up to Putin, that’s been figured out too, and hopefully Mueller has the ability to prove it
back when Trump first ran for president, back in 1999 for the 2000 elections that few people remember - that’s when he first started spouting the pro-russia nonsense after earlier trips there
so best bet is russian banks have secretly financed billions of dollars in his properties - he might be heavily in debt in russia - if that is true and it gets exposed, even the trump cult might have to question things if they can be convinced it’s true
I love that you have hope friend. It gives me hope when none existed before. Now this hope is battling my despair, hate and depression. Hopefully, it will win.
rawstory, which tends left-ward and yet is often cited by the old guard (e.g. NYT), has just dumped an overdue, yet impressive editorial title: Donald Trump is an illegitimate president — and here is why. That’s one of the first, and hopefully not the last, mainline stories declaring that trump is squatting there illegitimately.
It’s bad, but it’s not treason – he’s not instructing anyone specifically to take action, and it’s hard to see one make the case that he was trying to take down the government or destroy an institution in act of betrayal of his country.
Plus, let’s assume you want to argue that asking someone to find 30,000 destroyed documents is treasonous, you’d receive the counterargument that they are of public interest, and were destroyed for nefarious purposes, so we have a right to see them, even if nefarious means are required to obtain full transparency.
I mean, the same kind of arguments go against Ed Snowden, and while I’m not a fan of just stealing secrets, what he did was expose a huge lack of transparency to the general public – and his actions, technically, are far worse. Ironically… he’s being harbored by Russia… ironic in the Alanis Morissette kind of way… ; )
My whole thing with Trump is that people keep hitting the wrong arguments – his public conduct ALONE makes him a totally inept Presidential figure, he’s unbecoming of the office.
One needn’t wade into these more complicated issues where people are going to fall into their corners instead of weighing the historical, legal, political, and ethical precedents…
Long story short – the man is a clown. Get him out.
I don’t recall saying anything about the Cold War.
But why don’t you ask Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States about Putin’s commitment to freedom and democracy in the region?
If he were just a clown it would hardly be grounds to get rid of him. This is a vicious self-serving criminal raping America in any and every way he can conceive. He knows very well how to wield hate as a tool to split people apart and has no connection to truth, honesty or the best course to lead this country. Clowns make me laugh at times. this piece of shit puts me close to tears all the time. Get him out, I certainly agree with you on that part.
Never-Trump conservative and Russia expert Tom Nichols has a nice companion piece to that Chait article.
I’ve listened to a couple NPR interviews with folks who supported the current president and are now seeing increasing hits to their businesses as his trade war starts getting into swing. It is weird. They are uneasy and unsure about how things will turn out for them personally, but invariably still support the president.
Essentially they take his word for it that the trade war is necessary. They understand that it might make things tough. But they hope that he will not forget about their little corner of the industry before their business collapses. They hope he knows what he’s doing, but seem less sure.
My impression, though they didn’t say it out loud, is that they feel this guy is their last, best hope if any. The only one who seems to give a care about their situation on a personal level. I suspect they were hoping for some miraculous combination of libertarian free marketeer and American business protectionist. They didn’t count on an obsession with the trade deficit shaping his behavior so dramatically. But, if he wants it, it must be important though.
Sunk cost fallacy is hell of a drug, especially when large part of the cost is emotional. A lot of the Trump supporters, I bet, are aware on some level that they fucked up by supporting Cheeto Benito, but admitting it (especially with all the people who would say “Told you so!”) is too painful, so they double down.
Should this guy be on the panel asking questions?
Absolutely NOT. The amount of hypocrisy in this repukeacon party is startling and discouraging. At least the repubs in Nixon’s case had some sense of right vs wrong.
This.
I have a friend in his late thirties who is a Bernie supporter. But he just loathes Clinton. For no apparent reason that i can find. His pool hall buddies share the same opinion. I get the sense that the microtargeting of Hillary hate ads really hit home in his demographic. He’s an intelligent guy, but for this one topic he’s wildly opinionated. It’s… bizarre.
collusion is working together.
This is more employer/employee.
No collusion. 
