Alternately, maybe you simply don’t understand it, and in labeling it as bizarre and presenting it in caricature, maybe you’ve nailed the very issue that divides the camps?
Good thing we’re all smarter than that, huh?
Why the hostility to Clinton? What exactly was wrong with her, so wrong that you bring her up in the midst of a discussion of drumpf’'s collusion with the Russians?
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But Her Emails… are also the topic.
What’s drawing the topic policing? How’s that going to work out in the long run?
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I’m not topic policing. I’m asking you to explain your hostility towards Clinton.
See my comment here. It’s not directly about Clinton but about the haplessness of the DNC. You can follow the discussion thread back if you like.
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maybe you simply don’t understand
Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve had literally dozens of conversations about it and it boils down to “I don’t like how Hillary acts and looks” plus a few concerns about the emails and national security. And he hates Trump too.
I’m not providing a carature by mentioning “pool hall buddies.” This guy is retired and plays pool 5 days a week (and is going to the LV championship for two different teams). If anything, I think he has more of the pulse of what is going on in the public discussions than I have.
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“When is the last time you beat your wife?”
no, that’s an anecdote, quite right. If you project it beyond that boundaries of that room it’s a caricature though.
Have a good day. Keep spinning Phils!
Well, he’s publicly asking Russia to hack Hillary’s emails. Which they then immediately did. (Granted, a different set of emails, but…) And this leaves aside his private meetings with Russian official entities. It’s not comparable to Snowden. Snowden didn’t ask a hostile foreign government to interfere in the processes of our government, specifically an election, which is exactly what Trump did here, even if we’re being charitable.
I mean, he’s grossly violated the constitution (emoluments, etc., etc.) and done plenty of other disqualifying things, but let’s not let him off the hook for this either. Because that’s pretending that his public words don’t have meaning or impact, that people don’t act on them (when they clearly do). Stochastic terrorism. Stochastic treason.
I think that goes into the sunk cost fallacy, too. That was a hope, but even as it’s becoming abundantly clear he’s not only going to fail to live up to the hope but actually work against it, they avoid seeing the evidence. But more than that, people are seeing behavior from him that they find indefensible - but defending it anyways, because others are attacking him for it.
Misogyny is a hell of a thing.
What’s to understand? We know that if you take an imaginary politician bio and put a woman’s name on it, people will react with hostility to “her” when they viewed “him” favorably. There’s deeply rooted misogyny in the culture which means that admirable male political traits are also seen as despicable female ones. This is factually, provably true.
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“Collusion” is neither a crime. Nor a technical or legal term. It’s a term the press chose to describe a suite of actions both illegal and legal but super sketchy. That’s what allows them to keep saying “there was no collusion”. Because collusion effectively means whatever they say it does. And the investigations and indictments have no interest in finding something as nebulous as collusion.
So even where as this new indictment describes direct contacts between foreign intelligence operatives and Trump’s campaign. And a nice little detail about a GOP congressional candidate asking for and recieving info from Gucifer, the clearest simplest definition of what we mean by “collusion”. They can still celebrate this. Like every revelation and indictment. As Mueller “proving” there was no collusion.
The thing I keep pointing out to people who go on and on about Hillary did x y and z.
Is that everything Hillary has been accused of. Whether investigations that turned up nothing. Or wack ass conspiracies. And everything people warned she would do if I’m power. Trump has not only done. But bragged about doing.
Except murdering everyone. Which he keeps threatening to do.
I’m getting a little sick of that particular story line.
Hillary and Bernie proposed nearly identical platforms. Bernie sold it a bit better. But Hillary’s version had an actual policy backing explaining the how’s and why’s. Neither one of them really offered the mythic “vision” in terms of long term plans or really building a movement. Check lists of headline policies and a lot buzzwords.
And while Bernie definitely got some people very excited. Plenty of people were excited about Hilary as well. There was the whole “I’m with her” thing. Pants suit nation. Her rallies and events generally saw more people than Bernie’s. Broad City, which was a very hot trending show in 2016, did entire episode about how excited they were about Hillary. And excitement for Hilary was a runner through that entire season.
And while DNC were definitely jerks, And were revealed to be pretty poorly run overall. Theres very, very little evidence it had any effect on voting. Many of the things the DNC supposedly did to Bernie were things that were discussed or proposed. And ultimately don’t appear to have happened. Even assuming a more tangential effect of voting. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Because that was not a close primary
She got something like twice the number of votes he did. And delegate and state counts weren’t any closer. The states Bernie did win tended to be small, low population states with undemocratic, low participation primary models. Like caucuses. The people excited by Bernie may have been a whole lot louder than those excited about Hillary. But there were a lot less of them.
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Soviets. Not Russians.
Well, here ya go.
The plain unvarnished truth is that a presidential candidate needs to excite people who have been convinced that their vote doesn’t count, and therefore don’t vote. Why bother if nothing ever changes.
Obviously Hillary did a fine job in that she won the popular vote.
Exactly this. The Dems SHOULD have had a horse in the chute by now. Not just a name but, campaign financing, donor class hook-ups and campaign machinery in place. They are woefully behind and it’s getting scary as trump confirmed he IS running again.
They need to get their shit together. Like REALLY.
It’s almost as if they are complicit and are accepting trump for another 4 fucking years…
There will be NO America left after that.
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Soviets who were also Russians.
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Trump announced/confirmed his re-election bid within days of entering office. It was fairly unprecedented, And concerned a lot of people. Because it effectively makes it possible for him to continue collecting and shifting money like he did during the election. Basically turning his campaign apparatus into a sort of permenant graft machine.
As to whether the dems are behind? That’s pretty normal, especially in a midterm year. Obama announced his candidacy in Feb 2007. Trump himself announced in June 2015. And the trend for throwing your hat in the ring a bit more than a year ahead of the vote is fairly recent. With many complaining that a full year of campaign is too long. It’s often cited as really problematic out growth of our bad campaign finance structure. And the many other things in our elections that need reform.
So they’re kind of on pace. I will agree that there’s usually nationally visible potential candidates floating to the top by now. People more plausible than Frikin Oprah and jackasses like Andrew Quomo. Or whoever else literally no-one is actually interested in but the news locks on.
And there doesnt seem to be anyone like that floating around. Corey Booker is making a bit more noise than usual. And he’s perpetually rumored to have his eye on a presidential run. So maybe he’s trying. But there just don’t seem to be too many politicians trying to test the waters for a run right now. And that is a bit odd.
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No. I’d rather ask Poland if they think Hitler & Stalin are committed to peace & co-existence.
IIRC, it could protect him as a political candidate from critical remarks, as those could be construed as political speech themselves, and possibly subject to FEC oversight. Can’t find any reference to this now but I recall it (perhaps incorrectly) from early 2017.
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Did he properly close out his 2016 campaign, open the books, and start a new 2020 campaign, or just keep rolling forward? (I think I can guess the answer.)
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I think that was floated as an explanation of why he might be doing it. Less because it was a valid thing you can do with a campaign. Than because of trumps aggressive and legally questionable relationship with slander laws. Don’t quite remember the details. There was also a lot about the arrangement allowing all that obvious self dealing to continue indefinitely. With government agencies and the campaign paying a premium for the use of Trump organization assets and throwing tons of cash at his family and associates.
I think he technicality did the former. But practically he basically did the later. It very much looks like his campaign is a legal shield/paper entity like a shell Corp. So that when he does one of his press conferences at his golf courses it can technically be a campaign event. And those campaign funds can be used to pay 3x the going rate for the use of the place. He certainly never stopped any of that. But IIRC he set it all up as a new re-election campaign.
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Hard to tell. Some would be likely be Russian, some Ukrainian, some Georgian, maybe Uzbek or a Tuvan and so on. At least one Armenian made it to Marshall in the Red Army during WWII.
I am being pedantic but I really do believe that distinguishing between the Soviet Union and modern Russia is important. They are radically different beasts.
Also, it depends on whether you mean born in the territories that comprised the Russian Soviet Federative Republic or ethically Russian. Even in the much reduced Russia there are dozens (hundreds?) of different ethnic groups. According to to wiki the current Russian Minister of Defence is ethnically half Tuvan and half Russian.
Perhaps the most famous Soviet of all time was Stalin who was ethnically Georgian, was raised and educated in Georgia (including in a seminary!) and reportedly never lost his heavy Georgian accent.
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