2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Syt]

Huckabee is taking analogy lessons from Martinus:

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/794483288282955776

Trump may be a car wreck, but at least his car is pointed in right direction.  Hillary is a drunk-driver going the wrong way on the freeway.

[Valmy]

No way that is going to happen.  They are part of the Clinton Machine and you don't leave the Clinton Machine, voluntarily or involuntarily.

See you say things like this and make me think they are the best hope for America and then I remember she does not have a 50 point lead on Donald Trump.

[DGuller]

Long op ed by Andrew Sullivan about the dangers of a Trump presidency, and the road there:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/andrew-sullivan-trump-america-and-the-abyss.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Excerpt:

[...]

The Republican media complex have enabled and promoted his lies and conspiracy theories and, above all, his hysteria. From the poisonous propaganda of most of Fox News to the internet madness of the alt-right, they have all made a fortune this past decade by describing the world as a hellhole of chaos and disorder and crime for which the only possible solution is a third-world strongman. The Republicans in Washington complemented this picture of crisis by a policy of calculated obstruction to every single measure a Democratic president has attempted, rendering the Congress so gridlocked that it has been incapable of even passing a budget without constitutional crisis, filling a vacant Supreme Court seat, or reforming a health-care policy in pragmatic fashion. They have risked the nation's very credit rating to vent their rage. They have helped reduce the public support of the central democratic institution in American government, the Congress, to a consistently basement level never seen before — another disturbing analogy to the discredited democratic parliaments of the 1930s. The Republicans have thereby become a force bent less on governing than on destroying the very institutions that make democracy and the rule of law possible. They have not been conservative in any sane meaning of that term for many, many years. They are nihilist revolutionaries of the far right in search of a galvanizing revolutionary leader. And they have now found their man.

For their part, the feckless Democrats decided to nominate one of the most mediocre, compromised, and Establishment figures one can imagine in a deeply restless moment of anxiety and discontent. They knew full well that Hillary Clinton is incapable of inspiring, of providing reassurance, or of persuading anyone who isn't already in her corner, and that her self-regard and privilege and money-grubbing have led her into the petty scandals that have been exploited by the tyrant's massive lies. The staggering decision by FBI director James Comey to violate established protocol and throw the election into chaos to preserve his credibility with the far right has ripped open her greatest vulnerability — her caginess and deviousness — while also epitomizing the endgame of the chaos that the GOP has sought to exploit. Comey made the final days of the election about her. And if this election is a referendum on Clinton, she loses.

[...}

This is very on point, and is precisely why I have been in NeverGOP camp fairly solidly for a number of years now.  It has been Democrats vs. Authoritarians for a while now, Trump has only made it obvious.

The problem is I don't see where we go from here.  There are two camps of people with two completely different sets of reality.  That doesn't mean both of them are equally valid, they most certainly aren't, one camp is boringly sane and one is full of insane bigots self-brainwashed to North Korean levels, but neither will come towards the other one and acknowledge each others' truth.

[derspiess]

Looking at the recent Ohio polls, I can probably go ahead and vote my conscience next week

[derspiess]

Btw I wonder if we'll get to see how many people wrote in "David S. Pumpkins" for President?

[garbon]

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304296-tracking-poll-clinton-increases-lead-to-3-points

Clinton has 47 percent support to Trump's 44 percent, Friday's ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll found.
After Clinton led the poll by 12 points in the Oct. 23 edition of the poll, Trump made a huge jump, taking a one-point lead in Tuesday's version. But Clinton has gained ground in the tracking poll each day since.

The poll finds Clinton holds a significant lead among non-white voters, 76 to 17 percent.

Trump leads among white voters, 53 to 38 percent.

Seems pretty apparent who are the problem people in America.

[Valmy]

I am the 38%!

Clinton always seems to come storming back once she falls on her face. Glad to see that happening again...hopefully right on through until Tuesday.

[Martinus]

Seems you are not alone - the Dunham Whale has also called for extinction of straight white males:

http://www.dailywire.com/news/10469/lena-dunhams-sick-making-skit-celebrates-amanda-prestigiacomo

[Valmy]

Now now many countries lack significant numbers of straight white males and they still suck ass.

[garbon]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/why-is-hillary-clinton-so-widely-loved/506402/

What Hillary Clinton's Fans Love About Her

We do not see, often enough, the people who love Hillary Clinton, who support her because of her qualifications rather than because of her unqualified opponent, who empathize with her. Yet millions of Americans, women and men, love her intelligence, her industriousness, her grit; they feel loyal to her, they will vote with enthusiasm for her.

Human beings change as they grow, but a person's history speaks to who she is. There are millions who admire the tapestry of Hillary Clinton's past: the first-ever student commencement speaker at Wellesley speaking boldly about making the impossible possible, the Yale law student interested in the rights of migrant farmworkers, the lawyer working with the Children's Defense Fund, the first lady trying to make health care accessible for all Americans.

There are people who love how cleanly she slices through policy layers, how thoroughly she digests the small print. They remember that she won two terms to the United States Senate, where she was not only well-regarded but was known to get along with Republicans. They have confidence in her. There are people who rage at the media on her behalf, who see the coverage she too often receives as unfair. There are people who in a quiet, human way wish her well. There are people who, when Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to be president of the United States, will weep from joy.

Hillary Clinton was guilty immediately when she stepped into the view of the American public as the first lady of Arkansas. She was a lawyer full of dreams. She had made sacrifices for the man she loved, waived her plans, and moved to his state. But she also dared to think herself her husband's equal, to assume herself competent enough to take on expanding access to healthcare and reforming the Arkansas public education system. She was guilty of not being a traditional first lady. She offended the old patriarchal order. The conservative media loathed her.

A conservative writer labeled her a congenital liar when she was first lady, and the label stuck because it was repeated over and over—and it was a convenient label to harness misogyny. If she was a liar, then the hostility she engendered could not possibly be because she was a first lady who refused to be still and silent. "Liar' has re-emerged during this election even though Politifact, a respected source of information about politicians, has certified that she is more honest than most politicians—and certainly more honest than her opponent.

Because she is already considered guilty in a vague and hazy way, there is a longing for her to be demonstrably guilty of something. Other words have been repeated over and over, with no context, until they have begun to breathe and thrum with life. Especially "emails." The press coverage of "emails" has become an unclear morass where "emails" must mean something terrible, if only because of how often it is invoked.

The people who love Hillary Clinton know that the IT system at the State Department is old and stodgy, nothing like a Blackberry's smooth whirl. Hillary Clinton was used to her Blackberry, and wanted to keep using it when she became secretary of state. Hackers could have broken into her system, which was not as secure as the State Department's. But an exhaustive investigation has found no hacking and no nefarious intent—and intent is what matters above all else. Hillary Clinton has apologized. She made an understandable mistake. She did not commit a crime, and did not intend to commit a crime.

The American conservative media saw an opportunity to blow the "emails" story out of proportion, soon followed, almost bashfully, by the rest of the American media, obeying the noble rules from journalism school, insisting on false equivalencies even where it makes no sense, which is partly why it has become common to hear that both candidates are equally corrupt. Or equally disliked. Hillary Clinton is a knowledgeable, well-prepared, reasonable, experienced, even-tempered, hardworking candidate, while her opponent is a stubbornly uninformed demagogue who has been proven again and again to be a liar on matters big and small. There is no objective basis on which to equate Hillary Clinton to her opponent.

The people who love Hillary Clinton see the failings of the general American media, where news entertains rather than informs. They bristle when benign stories about her are covered with an ominous tone, and book-ended with layers of innuendo. They see that for actions deserving of outrage, the outrage in her case is always outsized.

They know that she is a bit too careful, but they understand that she has to be, that she cannot afford spontaneity. At the debate, when she began a response with "As I recall ... " the people who love her held their breaths because they knew how it came across, as a little staged, a little planned, but they understood. Her words have been so often plucked out of context and turned into scalding weapons, her actions so falsely magnified, that she leaned into caution, wrapped herself in a kind of caution that sometimes makes her appear stilted and in the media world of appearances, stilted can mean insincere. Hillary Clinton is not a performer. She does not have that charismatic flair—which she does not need to be a good president. But she is running for president in a country that expects news to be entertainment, and politicians to be performers, and so suspicion automatically hangs over her lack of public charisma.

Because Hillary Clinton is a woman, she is judged too harshly for doing what most politicians do—hedging sometimes, waffling sometimes, evading sometimes. Politicians are ambitious; they have to be. Yet for Hillary Clinton, ambition is often an accusation. She is held responsible for her husband's personal failings, in the gendered assumption that a wife is somehow an adult and a husband a child.

There are millions of Americans who do not have the self-indulgent expectation that a politician be perfect. They are frustrated that Hillary Clinton is allowed no complexity. And they love her.

[garbon]

Seems you are not alone - the Dunham Whale has also called for extinction of straight white males:

http://www.dailywire.com/news/10469/lena-dunhams-sick-making-skit-celebrates-amanda-prestigiacomo

Not alone? I don't recall asking for anyone to be exterminated.

[CountDeMoney]

It would be an incredibly uphill battle, and no guarantee to make inroads with the congressional Republicans, but I think a President Clinton would do herself and her new administration a substantial favor if she jettisoned the sycophants, protectors and handlers that always seem to make bad things worse for the Clintons.
Unfortunately, and especially after this campaign, I don't think that's going to happen. 

No way that is going to happen.  They are part of the Clinton Machine and you don't leave the Clinton Machine, voluntarily or involuntarily.

#VinceFosterSezWhat

[LaCroix]

good article, garbon

ITT but mostly elsewhere on the internet, it's sad to see people giving into conspiracy theories about the FBI

[Syt]

Seems pretty apparent who are the problem people in America.

The New Yorker had an interesting essay discussing the options of "epistocracy" or giving the vote only to educated and informed voters (or giving their votes mroe weight). Its conclusion was that while it might lead to objectively more competent holders of office, any implementation would be open for abuse as to where you draw the line between voters and non-voters and that in the end as many governed as possible should have a say in who leads.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

Roughly a third of American voters think that the Marxist slogan "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" appears in the Constitution. About as many are incapable of naming even one of the three branches of the United States government. Fewer than a quarter know who their senators are, and only half are aware that their state has two of them.

Democracy is other people, and the ignorance of the many has long galled the few, especially the few who consider themselves intellectuals. Plato, one of the earliest to see democracy as a problem, saw its typical citizen as shiftless and flighty:

Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he's idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy.

It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn't have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea "useless."

It also has the choice quote:

Brennan suggests that since voters in an epistocracy would be more enlightened about crime and policing, "excluding the bottom 80 percent of white voters from voting might be just what poor blacks need."

[CountDeMoney]

it's sad to see people giving into conspiracy theories about the FBI

The FBI may be pencilnecked stuffed shirts full of themselves but they're still cops, and cops fucking hate Clinton.

A lot of the leaky faucets in the FBI dripping into the Trump campaign are apparently in the New York field office, who happen to be very tight with Rudy Giuliani.

HAS THE F.B.I. GONE FULL BREITBART?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/fbi-investigation-clinton-foundation-peter-schweizer-breitbart

New reports reveal how the F.B.I. relied on an infamous Breitbart source as the basis for its investigation into the Clinton Foundation—and that agents see Clinton as "the antichrist personified."