We are on the brink of a historic moment...
June 7, 2016 2:54 AM   Subscribe

With 694 delegates up for grabs between five primaries and a caucus, it has been widely predicted that Secretary Clinton would surpass the 2383 delegate threshold needed to clinch the democratic presidential nomination today. Jumping the gun, The Associated Press is reporting that, by their count, Clinton has already reached this number. Senator Sanders' campaign has condemned the media for its "rush to judgement" and the Clinton campaign has simply said "we still have work to do".

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the GOP's presumptive nominee since May 3, has enjoyed his usual coverage and controversy. Overshadowing USA Today's tally of 3500 lawsuits, Trump's attacks on the federal judge presiding over civil fraud lawsuits against Trump University have earned him scorn from Democrats and Republicans alike. Amid reports of dysfunction and a lack of coordination and focus within his campaign, Trump continues to double down, ordering his surrogates to carry on his attacks on journalists and Judge Curiel. Following Clinton's evisceration of his foreign policy chops, Trump has only managed to respond with a tweet and *crickets*.

And we're not done yet, the primaries will finally be over June 14, when the District of Columbia holds its Democratic presidential primary.
posted by peeedro (2789 comments total) 53 users marked this as a favorite
 
wait, what's deez nuts doing?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:07 AM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


here, it's arguably in the media's interest to depict a close race, no?
posted by angrycat at 3:07 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


My mother is working at a polling station, as she has every election. She said that the rules and systems for the primary ballot this year are far more complicated than in years past- i.e. who can and cannot vote in the CA democratic primary, rules governing independents, etc.

Add to that the general buzz that I've been hearing. The CA dem leadership have been in for Hillary for months. Most of the Central Committees are that way. It's not that California doesn't have a powerful progressive fringe (arguably more powerful than the California GOP, in fact)...

I hope tomorrow goes well. I fear that there will be enough irregularities for the Berners to call sour grapes and corruption on the whole matter.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 3:09 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm enjoying reading All of these Republicans responding to Trump's racism, mostly because these are all people who would normally get a soundbite in about how bad a president Hillary Clinton would be or how great their nominee is. Instead they're busy playing cleanup in their own party and saying that they're "shocked, I say, shocked, to find out that there's RACISM in this establishment!"
posted by mmoncur at 3:12 AM on June 7, 2016 [34 favorites]




The VoteMaster is writing about there's a full-court press on Sanders to start throwing towels. Let's see what he can get in return for doing that...
posted by DreamerFi at 3:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]




LeRoienJaune - I'd wager that the reason why the CA primary rules are more complicated is them trying to unfuck the jungle primary system, which is a stupid, stupid idea that the CA GOP pushed through because they thought it would guarantee them more districts.

Also, RE: third party voting, I can actually give a really good reason why not to vote third party in most of the US in the general (primaries, do what you want, go nuts). Sorry if this has been stated before and more eloquently elsewhere, but I had to get this off my chest.

The US runs its federal elections by the first-past-the-post election system - first candidate to hit 50% of the vote plus one wins. No one hits that threshold, you go again until someone does. Since this system requires a winning candidate to earn a majority of cast votes, that pretty much means that two political organizations will emerge, each looking to represent 50% plus one of the population. You can try all you want, but if you're only appealing to 30% of voters in an election, you not only win precisely 0% of the time, but you more or less guarantee that candidates that are closer to your side than the opposition will lose, because you will be stealing your support from their 50%.

So, what is one to do? Well, this is the dirty little secret of first-past-the-post: to get what you want, you don't choose based on who you want to win, you vote against who you want to lose. Since first-past-the-post guarantees that there will only ever be two viable candidates, having to chase 50%+1 of the population means that no candidate will ever really be able to speak to every interest of those that they seek to convince to vote for them. Sure, by happenstance or being more politically close to the candidate or party's platform some people will be happier than others, but as a rule, first-past-the-post makes chasing a perfect candidate a losing strategy. However, you can definitely make sure that the candidate that least represents your interests will lose, and therefore at least keep things from moving much further away from what you want.

Now, there's something to be said for when you're so far away from either candidate that things will be equally bad for your interests under both of them, but I'm willing to say that that's more of a problem that the GOP has right now than the Democratic Party, and there's sufficient air between the candidates that "they're both the same" charges don't really hold as much water as they did in 2000.
posted by Punkey at 3:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


(For the record, I think single transferable vote is so much better. You rank your preferences in order of the ones you want to support and leave the others blank, and if no one hits 50%+1 and your #1 pick is dead last, your vote transfers to your #2 pick automatically, and so on until there's a majority winner. This way, you can still put your strongest support behind that 30% appeal candidate and really have a chance of sending a quantitative message and therefore shape discourse, but you can also be fairly certain to get someone that's at least somewhat like what you want.)
posted by Punkey at 3:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


“My experience with Donald Trump is he doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body,” Orrin Hatch said.

"He's very tolerant of old, white, male Republican politicians who support him."
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:38 AM on June 7, 2016 [50 favorites]


"With 694 delegates up for grabs between five primaries and a caucus, it has been widely predicted that Secretary Clinton would surpass the 2383 delegate threshold needed to clinch the democratic presidential nomination today. Jumping the gun, The Associated Press..."

Ah, AP and NBC creating some controversy for themselves? What self-serving BS! Nothing-burger elevated to gripping (non) news story? Intsa-controversy? "Poke a finger in the eye" of Sander's supporters?

Pretty clear Hillary is going to secure the numbers needed today. Let me see, how to lessen that achievement with a hideously cynical "jump the gun" provocation of the self evident? Ah, why?
posted by WinstonJulia at 3:38 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


The US runs its federal elections by the first-past-the-post election system - first candidate to hit 50% of the vote plus one wins. No one hits that threshold, you go again until someone does.

what? No. the only "federal"election is for president and, electoral college aside, it's whoever gets the most votes...
posted by ennui.bz at 3:40 AM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


Punkey: Actually, FPTP means the winner is the person with the most votes -- might be a plurality, not a majority. You could be talking about primaries or something, but senators, congressmen/women -- no. The President has that weird electoral college thing, but usually, FPTP = plurality winner.
posted by CCBC at 3:40 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Okay, apologies - but the point still stands. If you're chasing a plurality of votes, unless something crazy like Perot in 1992 happens, it's in your best interest to vote against, not for.
posted by Punkey at 3:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I disagree -- but that's not so important right now.
posted by CCBC at 3:44 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Don't fall for 'lesser of two evils' argument

I have very little patience for that sort of thing in 2016. Trump is a ridiculous reality show clown, a novelty candidate who just won't go away. He is also openly racist and sexist, and damn near openly fascist. His administration would make us long for the days of W.

The stakes are just too high. If we found out that every bullshit conspiracy theory about Hillary was true, she'd still be better than Trump by miles. Pinch your nose and vote for the one who isn't Trump. (Bonus: First female president. But the main selling point here is that she's not Trump.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [194 favorites]


it's in your best interest to vote against, not for.

luckily then, in the coming general election this will be your only option
posted by ennui.bz at 3:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


I fear that there will be enough irregularities for the Berners to call sour grapes and corruption on the whole matter.

Ah, no. There is no unicorn.

Ideally, Clinton would hold back on declaring until afterwards to remove the option to make this argument, but regardless CA is meaningless in terms of the nomination.

fivethirtyeight Hillary clinches nomination because more Democrats are voting for her

Also, John Judis on Sanders

TalkingPointsMemo John Judis on Sanders campaign
posted by C.A.S. at 3:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


But the main selling point here is that she's not Trump

I think the main selling point is that she is smart, knows what she's doing, cares about minorities, thinks globally, agrees with 90% of my politics, and could be a great president.

But whatever works for you!
posted by mmoncur at 3:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [223 favorites]


One of the few nice things about this election cycle is that I'm going to get to do both. I'm voting against Trump, who's many of my political nightmares come to life, and I'm voting for Clinton, who I voted for in the primary and think will be a genuinely good president.
posted by Akhu at 3:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [61 favorites]


[Trump's] administration would make us long for the days of W.

Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.
posted by ryanrs at 3:55 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Blast from MeFi's past:
A moment in history; Obama Wins Presidential Nomination. (June 3rd, 2008)

For context, the Obama/Clinton race was much closer, but after the final primaries he was able to clinch the nomination with a rollout of ~50 superdelegate endorsements. Obama claimed victory with a thunderous speech in St. Paul, future site of the GOP convention, with lines like "this was the moment the rise of the oceans began to slow."

The Clinton camp hemmed and hawed for awhile -- memorably, campaign head Terry McAuliffe appeared on MSNBC fresh from Puerto Rico in a Hawaiian shirt, waving a bottle of Bacardi Gold and half-heartedly insisted Clinton had it in the bag. But after Obama gave his press gaggle the slip for a secret meeting, a week later Clinton wholeheartedly endorsed Obama, regretting not shattering that last glass ceiling but confident she and her voters had left "about 18 million cracks in it!" The two would later campaign together at a unity rally in (where else?) Unity, New Hampshire.

That primary season ended with such a sense of common purpose and positive energy that translated into a near-landslide victory -- given that Clinton is beating Sanders by a far wider margin, I hope he can swallow his pride, respect the presumptive nomination of our nation's first female major-party candidate, and join the fight. Or else Jeff Weaver better find himself a really amusing shirt to wear drunk on national TV.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [67 favorites]


While it is certainly not the only reason to vote for Clinton, it would be kind of nice if this year the U.S. managed to elect a woman and thereby join the ranks of apparently more enlightened countries such as Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, the Central African Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Dominica, Finland, France, Germany, Guyana, Haiti, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Malawi, Mali, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the UK, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia ...
posted by kyrademon at 4:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [62 favorites]


Managing Your Feelings is Not My Job - About women and winning.

bardophile posted this at the bottom of the last thread, and I would so hate for it to be passed over that I'm posting it again.
posted by Salieri at 4:28 AM on June 7, 2016 [56 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.
Ted Cruz.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think the next logical step after Trump is Larry the Cable Guy (the character, not the comedian who plays him).
posted by mmoncur at 4:33 AM on June 7, 2016


Canada has never elected a female prime minister. Kim Campbell was not elected.
posted by My Dad at 4:33 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Meanwhile, Republican House Financial Committee chair Jeb Hensarling trots out legislation that's bound to appeal to the populist wing of his caucus: a proposal to repeal banking regulations.
The plan would also repeal the Volcker Rule, which aims to stop banks from making some risky bets with their own money. Moreover, the legislation would prevent a body of regulators known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council from designating any nonbanks as “systemically important.” MetLife recently won a federal court case to throw out its “too big to fail” label from the F.S.O.C., but other companies, including the American International Group and Prudential Financial, are still covered. General Electric’s financial unit has applied to have the designation removed.

At the same time, the proposal would allow the country’s largest banks to exempt themselves from capital and liquidity requirements and other regulatory standards if they hold enough capital to maintain a leverage ratio of 10 percent.

...The legislation would also restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and remove some of its powers. The plan would replace the agency’s single director with a bipartisan commission, which would be called the “Consumer Financial Opportunity Commission.” All of the financial regulatory agencies would have to abide by heightened cost-benefit analysis standards that critics have argued are designed to slow or even halt the rule-writing process. The financial agencies would also be reformed as bipartisan commissions and subject to the congressional appropriations process, except in the case of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.
This proposal fits in with Speaker Paul Ryan's stated desire to present a positive agenda the Republicans would enact under President Trump. And here you have it: Giveaways to the big banks.

Say what you will about Clinton, but I doubt she'd sign this codswallop.
posted by Gelatin at 4:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


I think the main selling point is that she is smart, knows what she's doing, cares about minorities, thinks globally, agrees with 90% of my politics, and could be a great president.

Those things are certainly what she's saying to sell her candidacy, yes.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:38 AM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


Canada is far from the only entry on that list that's wrong. And, more importantly, enlightenment is not a checklist.

Hillary Clinton is a total establishment candidate and relative to possible Democratic nominees will be basically fine. It's probable that Sanders wouldn't have been able to push through any crazy financial reforms, but he would have at least brought those things up and made them part of the conversation. Hillary probably won't, and it'll mostly be business as usual (Democrat-relative, meaning hopefully progress on civil rights and social programs, which is certainly far better than we could possibly expect out of a Republican president). Any Democrat beats any Republican, but the people at the bottom can only take so much more "business as usual". The Overton Window needs to be moved pretty far pretty soon.
posted by IAmUnaware at 4:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


Say what you will about Clinton, but I doubt she'd sign this codswallop.

That's the thing, her industry connections and past history doesn't give me warm-fuzzies about that, while I have a good feeling that Sanders would tell them to fuck off.
posted by mikelieman at 4:44 AM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Paul Ryan is failing up through this party like Big Head. He will be running next.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


Oh here we go again: another round of men telling me why I'm wrong to be excited about Hillary Clinton.
posted by peacheater at 4:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [168 favorites]


From that Managing Your Feelings piece:

I am declaring a 72 hour moratorium on women having to worry about men’s delicate feelings. I’ve waited 60 years. America has waited 240. All 44 of America’s presidents — all 44 of them — have been men. Suffragettes were beaten, spat upon, ridiculed, arrested, imprisoned, hung from their wrists, beaten, force-fed, and terrorized just to win women the right to vote. I’ve shown up every election of my adult life and sent money to, handed out literature for, walked door-to-door for, and voted for one damn man after another. I am going to spike the ever-loving hell out of this football, do a dance in the end zone, fall to my knees and call on Columbia, high-five everyone I know, do the wave, show the English my bum, and then I’m going to open the champagne and really get crazy.

I stood, almost 8 years ago to the day, listening to Hillary Clinton give her concession speech and throw her support to then-Senator Obama. We were crowded in like sardines in the DC building museum, and I was standing next to a woman just a little older than I. We got to chatting, standing on our swollen ankles there in the stifling heat, and learned that both of our dads had been union organizers and that that was what had led to our own interest in politics. We wept a little bit together, sad to see that, once more, the cool young guy with no experience was winning out over the woman who’d paid her dues, earned her stripes, done what was expected, and then still failed because, well, reasons. We held hands for a few seconds, both aware that, things being what they were, it was quite likely we’d die without seeing a woman president. I took some pictures that I emailed to her afterwards. I was thinking today that I wish I still had her email address. I’d like to call her tomorrow and whoop.

We deserve that whoop. We earned that whoop. And even if I can’t whoop with her, I am going to go out under the brand new crescent moon and I am going to whoop like a banshee.

And so if you are a man who is going to have his feelings hurt tomorrow, who is going to be offended by women joyously celebrating a victory, maybe tomorrow would be a good day for you to go fishing with the guys. Read a book. Pound nails into things. Watch old Archie Bunker re-runs.

But, you know what? For a short time, managing your feelings is not my job. I’m going to be too busy celebrating. You do it for a change; it’s a tiring job.


posted by bardophile at 4:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [92 favorites]


Mod note: Hey folks, friendly reminder that there's no reason to rush into the brand new thread just to cram it up as quickly as possible with the exact same fighty arguments posted hundreds of times in all the other election threads. There is probably going to be some news that people can talk about today, so let's concentrate more on that.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [65 favorites]


Voted at 6:30 this morning! Voter #3 in the district.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:50 AM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


Thanks to everyone who is still voting today! There are so many people who cannot for one reason or another.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.
Steven Seagal.
posted by um at 4:55 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Libertarian Johnson would not use marijuana as president

Well then what's the point? Of any of this?
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 AM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

Joe Arpaio, probably.
posted by duffell at 4:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


If Trump loses, I second the idea that Ryan has the inside track to the nomination.
posted by drezdn at 4:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


So the AP is jumping the gun by saying Clinton's nomination has been clinched one day in advance, when this outcome has been obvious to all for months? Okay.

I kid, I kid. But due to Reasons I'm not going to be able to make it to my polling place today, and I'm happy to know that my one vote won't be the difference between Clinton winning and losing.
posted by ejs at 4:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


On the one hand, I have serious doubts about Clinton's respect for the rule of law as regards herself.

On the other hand, Trump is a nightmare that America refuses to wake up from.
posted by oheso at 4:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


It would make sense to me if he said that he was not going to use drugs or alcohol because the job requires that his judgement be unimpaired at all times, Going To Maine, but I know a lot of people who support legalization but don't care to use.
posted by wintermind at 4:59 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Once again, for the record:
...What about the option to vote for an ideologically attractive but electorally marginal candidate? This option may be attractive for someone who desires to keep his hands clean by not lending support to candidates he finds morally reprehensible. That’s a noble reason for action. Moral integrity is an important character trait.

But the search for a clean conscience may result in immoral behavior. If our vote is part of a set of votes that will contribute to the defeat of the realistically electable ''lesser evil,'' therefore electing the ''more evil'' candidate, then we force society to pay a high price for our clean conscience. Sometimes, our concern for feeling morally impeccable should give way to a concern for what type of society we can help to create for the sake of all, including ourselves.

If we have a duty of aid toward society, our duty becomes even more stringent when there are real prospects that a scarily unpredictable leader would take power, a candidate who, if elected, could harm society. Under such circumstances, the duty to vote for the lesser evil would be a very serious one.

We cannot expect others to act on society’s behalf if we will not do so ourselves. Thus, voting for the lesser evil is not a lesser action. Morally, it is the right thing to do.
Yes, you do have an obligation to vote for the lesser of two evils. Here’s why.
posted by y2karl at 5:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [43 favorites]


Alex Jones for VP! Let's make America Illuminati again!
posted by fungible at 5:02 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Managing Your Feelings is Not My Job - About women and winning.
bardophile posted this at the bottom of the last thread, and I would so hate for it to be passed over that I'm posting it again.



Managing feelings of likely voters -- particularly those whose candidate you defeated in a primary election, since they're probably closest to being allies -- is critical work in politics.

Fortunately for all of us, my guess is that Clinton is smart enough to do that work, essays from some of her supporters notwithstanding.
posted by wildblueyonder at 5:18 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Husband is Sanders supporter who thinks Clinton campaign going along with AP declaration is "skeezy" because it might suppress turnout. I kinda shrug at it, but I wonder what y'all think.
posted by emjaybee at 5:19 AM on June 7, 2016


She didn't go along with it.
posted by drezdn at 5:21 AM on June 7, 2016 [51 favorites]


Husband is Sanders supporter who thinks Clinton campaign going along with AP declaration is "skeezy" because it might suppress turnout. I kinda shrug at it, but I wonder what y'all think.

The Clinton campaign has been pretty clear that they did NOT want the race to be called yesterday (they were hoping for tonight), so I don't get what's "skeezy" about Clinton's reaction, other than the fact that she is Hillary Clinton and therefore is eeeevil and bad.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [80 favorites]


I think it's not at all clear whose turnout is going to be suppressed, and Clinton would rather the AP not have called the thing for her last night. I also think that there is not a thing she could say or do that Sanders supporters wouldn't consider "skeezy." She basically brushed it off and said to focus on the primaries. What exactly was she supposed to say that would have been acceptable to Sanders supporters?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [36 favorites]


And it's really just grasping at an outrage straw, anyway.

We have to kick our addiction to outrage.
posted by notyou at 5:24 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


How dare you! I'm not an addict! I can stop any time!
posted by amarynth at 5:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


Canada has never elected a female prime minister.

Technically, Canada has never elected any prime ministers. Canada elects MPs, and MPs elect PMs. Campbell is as legitimate as every other Canadian Prime Minister, and I wish people would stop treating her otherwise. We've had twelve PMs by appointment (that is, not directly from an election) out of 23 total PMs.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


Sanders will not win the nomination. He hasn't had a realistic chance for quite a while. I get that politicians might mislead their followers for various reasons but I've turned from a Sanders, in the primary, voter to a Clinton voter as a result of Sanders' talk of a contested convention.
posted by rdr at 5:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


I'm just going to say one more time, I do not now and never will again buy the argument that "lesser evil" somehow equates to "good." This is the exact sort of thinking that has put the Democratic Party squarely where it is today and why voters haven't successfully done anything about it yet.

What exactly was she supposed to say that would have been acceptable to Sanders supporters?

What she said is perfectly acceptable to this Sanders supporter. Please give most of us some credit for not being irrational haters.
posted by Foosnark at 5:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


The AP called it and reported it. They are a major respected news organization that reaches everywhere in the country. I doubt any significant number of people will notice the story just because the Clinton campaign mentioned it. (If they did mention it? I'm not clear on that.)
posted by Drinky Die at 5:27 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Managing feelings of likely voters -- particularly those whose candidate you defeated in a primary election, since they're probably closest to being allies -- is critical work in politics.

Fortunately for all of us, my guess is that Clinton is smart enough to do that work, essays from some of her supporters notwithstanding.


That piece rubbed me the wrong way, as have any number of other pieces written by various candidates' supporters over the election cycle. But both Clinton and Sanders have been personally quite good at not going down those paths, so I do my best to not get all hot and bothered about it.

Trump is a total shitshow and I keep thinking the whole edifice will implode but so far it just improbably keeps lurching along. It's amazing how effective it has been for him to simply assert that the rules don't apply to him, and then somehow they magically don't.

I worry about this election, because I've never seen such terrible choices. Clinton is smart and her policies are going to be ok-ish, but she has the most tepid support that I can remember and actively repels a lot of people. It feels considerably worse than Dukakis, which had been my previous low mark of noticing any enthusiasm.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:27 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm wondering how big of a shitshow r/sfp and r/politics will be over the next week.

Endless conspiracy theories and whining and let's take it to the convention posturing as people go through the stages of grief.
posted by vuron at 5:30 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: just grasping at an outrage straw
posted by oheso at 5:30 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


At this point I can't imagine people who were still planning to vote for Sanders over the weekend despite the long odds are now thinking they won't show up today because the AP said so.

But that might just be me: I will vote for Sanders today, and will go to the polls to vote for Clinton in the fall. They're different candidates but they're both candidates with a lot to recommend them.
posted by wildblueyonder at 5:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


It's sad to see such negativity on what is truly an historic day. My heart is bursting today.
posted by Dashy at 5:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [31 favorites]


Husband is Sanders supporter who thinks Clinton campaign going along with AP declaration is "skeezy" because it might suppress turnout.

I think it could go either way re: turnout. the basic fact is that Bernie was not going to be the nominee after NY, but political discourse in the US is too idiotic to deal with the idea that he might have legitimate political reasons for continuing to campaign.
posted by ennui.bz at 5:34 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Endless conspiracy theories and whining and let's take it to the convention posturing as people go through the stages of grief.

I saw some Reddit posts yesterday that were very sad. People very upset about the AP call because they know -- THEY KNOW -- that Bernie can still win. Long threads where people talk about donating entire paychecks, all of their meager savings, disability checks, etc. because they think that if Bernie can win California, he will win the nomination. This of course is the state of the race as they know it -- as they've been told BY THE CAMPAIGN itself. Endless appeals to donate more. Donate today to send a message! To show the corporate media that this isn't over!

Sorry, but Bernie needs to own that shit. He's been running a bit of a traveling tent revival for awhile now. And at this point the people who are losing the most are the ones who can least afford it.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [70 favorites]


I voted for Sanders here in Indiana, and I'll be voting for Trump in the fall. He can't possibly be an effective President, but she might be, and that's frightening.
posted by MikeWarot at 5:41 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I voted for Sanders here in Indiana, and I'll be voting for Trump in the fall. He can't possibly be an effective President, but she might be, and that's frightening.

How effective does he need to be to sign what the Republican congress puts in front of him? Or nominate 1-3 justices?
posted by chris24 at 5:43 AM on June 7, 2016 [75 favorites]


Look, I don't like Clinton, but the foreshadowing of what racists will do in this country during a Trump presidency is horrifying, and cannot be allowed to happen.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [106 favorites]


Judging by the things some of my Facebook friends have been posting lately it doesn't matter what happens in terms of election results or polling or anything: Bernie is ACTUALLY going to win, and if he doesn't it is because Hillary is corrupt, and the whole thing is the fault of the democratic elites, not the people who are actually voting.
posted by dirtdirt at 5:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


*as they've been told BY THE CAMPAIGN itself*

Yeah, no. I am a Bernie supporter and have read all the fundraising emails. I can understand your desire for him to reign in the more unhinged sections of his supporters, like reddit conspiracy mongers, but the campaign hasn't said anything false in their communication. He might still win California, and there are, as ennui.bz points out above, a lot of reasons for him to stay in for at least another 30 hours or so. It isn't too much to ask.

Seriously, the likely scenario is that he endorses Clinton sometime after the primaries are over and before Convention, kind of like that candidate did with that other candidate all the way back in 2008.
posted by ent at 5:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


Sanders' talk of a contested convention.

what has also been true since NY is that Clinton was not going to get 2383 pledged delegates. "contesting" the convention means following Dem party rules, going to the convention, making a case to the superdelegates, and having the convention select a nominee, rather than conceding.

"contesting the convention" is just following Dem party rules for selecting the candidate. it's not some radical attack on the party.
posted by ennui.bz at 5:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


He can't possibly be an effective President,

Look northward to Michigan to see what kind of "ineffective" President Trump will be. Rick Snyder is the exact same kind of businessman-turned-politician -- if the legislature goes along with his pet thing, then he will log-roll everything else that they want. Michigan doesn't have a helmet law anymore. Michigan legalized sales of fireworks. Michigan is a irght-to-work- state now. Don't think that Trump will just curl up and do nothing for four years. He will enable everything that the GOP really wants, in return for, I don't know, them voting for him to change his letterhead to "His Awesomeness" or some shit.
posted by Etrigan at 5:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [81 favorites]


I can't vote for Clinton regardless of all the eloquently-worded essays that tell me I'm wrong. The Democrats have done nothing to address the many issues that Clinton has, instead they've just assumed people will vote for her. That's a dangerous assumption.
posted by tommasz at 5:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


The last link is part of James Fallows' "time capsule" series. His intent is to make damn sure nobody has any plausible deniability for supporting Trump.

That particular entry is the first glimmer of real hope I've felt in months.
posted by whuppy at 5:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I truly don't understand those who make the Sanders to Trump leap. How does that work? I mean they stand for completely opposite things? "Yeah, I was for revolutionary idealist fighting for the people, but now I'm for the racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, burning dumpster fire of a human being." What the what?
posted by bluecore at 5:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [154 favorites]


Nope. Sanders' strategy for a contested convention is to lobby superdelegates to throw their support behind him despite Clinton having more pledged delegates and having recieved more votes. That's was never going to happen unless some huge scandal errupted before the convention. Also, it's profoundly undemocratic.
posted by rdr at 5:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


I've got a big grin on my face. I wasn't expecting to be so excited but it turns out I really am thrilled to see Clinton get the nomination. I fully expect to be weeping tears of joy come election night.


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

I've been worried about this ever since Trump was declared the nominee for the Republican party. If the Republicans can go for a man who is a lying, flip-flopping narcissist with no previous experience in government, with no policies, openly misogynistic and racist, fond of conspiracy theories he reads on the internet, and who is apparently not interested in actually doing any work in the White House, then that leaves the door wide open to anybody with enough fame and money to run as a serious candidate. Trump has serious issues, like being unable to tone down his idiocy to appear more "Presidential", but perhaps the next dumpster fire that shows up will be able to keep the mask on long enough to appeal to a wider audience. God help us.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:55 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


what has also been true since NY is that Clinton was not going to get 2383 pledged delegates

2,383 is a majority of pledged and super. If you're arbitrarily not going to count supers for her, why include them in the required total other than a quixotic attempt to pretend she hasn't won?

And funny how no one said it was technically a contested convention when Obama won with the help of supers. Even Bernie himself endorsed Obama as the nominee once he had the number including supers.
posted by chris24 at 5:56 AM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


While I don't think that the median wage is going to get to "I can live with this student debt now" levels under Clinton, she isn't a fascist menace to everyone not-white or not-male.

Not enthusiastic at all but the votes still need to be cast in November.
posted by Slackermagee at 5:56 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I truly don't understand those who make the Sanders to Trump leap. How does that work? I mean they stand for completely opposite things?

And to do so specifically because they're scared of what she might do. A woman who tried to fix healthcare decades before it became fashionable and voted nearly identically with Sanders when they were in the Senate together. I don't think I understand people anymore.

We need to replace the word "sapiens" in our species designation. There are insect species that behave more rationally and cooperatively than we do.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [62 favorites]


If you're capable of Trump<>Sanders pivoting, you're not FOR anything. You're AGAINST something. You're frothing with rage against The Establishment and you're ready to Tear The Whole Corrupt State Down, Maaaaaan, and that enmity is more important to you than political positioning.

You should also consider switching to decaf.
posted by delfin at 5:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [172 favorites]


that leaves the door wide open to anybody with enough fame and money to run as a serious candidate.

Idiocracy was a documentary.
posted by mikelieman at 5:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I truly don't understand those who make the Sanders to Trump leap. How does that work?

Neither one is Clinton. The majority of Sanders-to-Trump types aren't voting for someone, they're voting against her. It's not principle, it's opposition.

The majority of Sanders voters, however, aren't the Sander-to-Trump types, and have actually thought about why their vote matters. They voted for him because they believe in the same ideals he does, and the majority of them will never vote for Trump because their ideals do not line up.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


e pluribus minimus malus

i might have to practice it but i don't have to like it

but bernie just needs to stop - today's the last day i want to see him run - after this, he can be a righteous dude and concede or he can be a bitter jerk
posted by pyramid termite at 5:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


All Bernie has to do is win 117% of California and New Jersey to take it all.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:59 AM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


Sanders' strategy for a contested convention is to lobby superdelegates to throw their support behind him despite Clinton having more pledged delegates and having recieved more votes. That's was never going to happen unless some huge scandal errupted before the convention. Also, it's profoundly undemocratic.

I agree that "superdelegates" are undemocratic. But criticizing Bernie for threatening to follow the rules of the party, for whose nomination he is running, is perverse.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


To my fellow Californians: Whatever your feelings about the top of the ticket, if you haven't already voted, please vote. Write in your cat if you really hate everyone at the top, but vote all the down-ticket items. And if you're in San Francisco (or anywhere similar), leave yourself plenty of time to get through the zillion-page ballot.
posted by rtha at 6:02 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


If you're capable of Trump<>Sanders pivoting, you're not FOR anything. You're AGAINST something. You're frothing with rage against The Establishment and you're ready to Tear The Whole Corrupt State Down, Maaaaaan, and that enmity is more important to you than political positioning.

You are also likely protected from any severe negative effects by privileges afforded by your income, race, and sex. Just something to reflect on and consider before you burn down the house that we will all have to live in for four years. You might have an escape hatch but please consider the folks who don't.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:02 AM on June 7, 2016 [87 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

Today is the first time in a long while that I can remember feeling sad about losing the <img> tag, because I can tell you exactly who the GOP will run in 2020. Every time we think they've reached the upper limit of caricature, they double down and show us that there's actually a more horrifying choice, so I give you:

Drinking Bird 2020
posted by Mayor West at 6:03 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Don't fall for 'lesser of two evils' argument

Indeed. Don't settle for an amateur like Trump. Greg Stilson 2016!
posted by Naberius at 6:04 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


But criticizing Bernie for threatening to follow the rules of the party, for whose nomination he is running, is perverse.

When he spent most of his campaign attacking as corrupt and undemocratic the very system he's now trying to use, it's not so perverse.
posted by chris24 at 6:04 AM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


But criticizing Bernie for threatening to follow the rules of the party, for whose nomination he is running, is perverse.

What about criticizing him for his self-serving pivot from "railing against the rules of the party when superdelegates lined up for Clinton early because superdelegates are undemocratic" to "woo the superdelegates to undemocratically take the nomination anyway". Is that perverse?
posted by Etrigan at 6:04 AM on June 7, 2016 [45 favorites]


I truly don't understand those who make the Sanders to Trump leap. How does that work? I mean they stand for completely opposite things? "Yeah, I was for revolutionary idealist fighting for the people, but now I'm for the racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, burning dumpster fire of a human being." What the what?

I've been part of a few conversations with some not-insane Trump supporters who are also Sanders supporters. The common theme seems to be a rejection of the status quo, specifically, the neoliberal status quo (and some of them can even put it in those terms).

It's still a spectacular error in judgment to back Trump. There are lots of alternatives to the status quo that are terrible. Trump is one of them. But the idea that Clinton is status quo and Trump and Sanders are not is true enough at a crude level.
posted by wildblueyonder at 6:05 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


You might have an escape hatch but please consider the folks who don't.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I don't think there's a single person ITT who feels this way.
posted by fifthrider at 6:06 AM on June 7, 2016


(That is, that is playing the "Bern it all down" game.)
posted by fifthrider at 6:06 AM on June 7, 2016


I performed some research into Trump's properties, using his official business webpage, and frankly, where else am I going to post it except on the blue.

A numerical breakdown, excluding those categorized as past properties, 42 properties are listed. Thirty-three of these have the name Trump prominently in their title. Seventeen have disclaimers. Typical is this one for a Uruguayan project:

Trump Tower Punta del Este is not owned, developed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their principles or affiliates. Aetos SA, the owner and developer of the property uses the "Trump" name and mark under license from Trump Marks Punta del Este LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.

Investigating a bit further, I found that at least one more that didn’t have a disclaimer (Trump International Hotel and Tower, Vancouver) should have had one. Both Canadian properties have been under fire to change their names (drop Trump). This may be true of other international properties.

Some of the websites for these places are nearly unreadable while others well-designed.

A fair number of the foreign projects are incomplete, although all of them seem to be under construction rather than just existing as projected projects. This suggests that all of these Trump name deals are a bit old and no recent deals have been made.

Of the international projects, three are in Central and South America, two are in India, two in Canada, one in the Philippines, one in South Korea and one in Istanbul (!).

Two additional golf courses are in Dubai.

It seems (no big surprise) that he simply sold his name to a number of places. Also, there is the question of who will protect these if they come under attack considering the lightning rod nature of his candidacy. And, how are these businesses doing? Are people in Panama City filling the Trump Ocean Club?

Internationally, more so than in the U.S., Trump is ruining Trump's name. I'm going to guess that he'll be bankrupt in a year.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


"Nope. Sanders' strategy for a contested convention is lobby superdelegates to throw their support behind him despite Clinton having more pledged delegates and having recieved more votes. That's was never going to happen unless some huge scandal errupted before the convention. Also, it's profoundly undemocratic."
I lost all respect for the man as some kind of principled fighter for reform of the Democratic party a few months ago when he saw the writing on the wall that so many of his supporters refused to and abruptly stopped constantly complaining about superdelegates. Presumably it was the moment he realized his best chance was to use them to steal the nomination from primary voters like he bitterly accused Hilary of trying to do.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:08 AM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


You are also likely protected from any severe negative effects by privileges afforded by your income, race, and sex. Just something to reflect on and consider before you burn down the house that we will all have to live in for four years. You might have an escape hatch but please consider the folks who don't.

this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:11 AM on June 7, 2016 [31 favorites]


The supposed group of Sanders to Trump switchers seems like a media creation designed to tear down people who supported him.

Same. I've seen vitriol online and in media that I just don't see IRL. I'm very active in Dem. politics in a very liberal town in my state, and almost no one I know who has been voting for more than 1 or 2 cycles is saying much beyond "I prefer ____ but of course I'll go with whoever will stop Donald Fucking Trump." From what I've seen, the media-quoted "Bernie Bros" or "HashTagBernItDown" or whatever just look like an extremely small but vocal group of either very-inexperienced, maybe first time voters, or paid ratfuckers. PUMA 2.0.
posted by Cookiebastard at 6:13 AM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


I don't think there's a single person ITT who feels this way. (That is, that is playing the "Bern it all down" game.)

Yes, there was a commenter upthread who voted for Sanders in Indiana and who will vote for Trump in the general. Also, this is not a tiny number of largely irrelevant voters. At least not according to current national polls. The data suggests that not an insignificant number of voters (mostly white men and younger voters) are finding it difficult to pivot from Sanders to Clinton. I hope that in the intervening months this changes.

this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.

Sorry if it came across that way -- it was more an appeal to be honest with yourself. If you voted for Sanders in the primary but will vote for Trump in the general, does it really have anything to do with the type of country you want to live in? Or is just because you have a personal animus against one particular candidate?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:15 AM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.

I read it as more "please consider the consequences of your vote to people less protected than you are."

Speaking as one of those folks whose situation is precarious enough for a Trump presidency to do me real harm, I'm wishing more folks would. Of course, a reasonable number of Trump's voters specifically have said they wish harm on some folks. (Witness: his support among racial/sexuality based hate groups)
posted by Archelaus at 6:20 AM on June 7, 2016 [56 favorites]


You are also likely protected from any severe negative effects by privileges afforded by your income, race, and sex. Just something to reflect on and consider before you burn down the house that we will all have to live in for four years. You might have an escape hatch but please consider the folks who don't.

this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.


This is an odd way to interpret what was said. Pointing out that privilege protects against the possible effects of Trump and to please consider those less privileged when voting is hardly calling someone a bad person.
posted by chris24 at 6:21 AM on June 7, 2016 [58 favorites]


I'll tell you my point of view on what is going on, for what it's worth.

Most people have come to an understanding that our political system is completely corrupt, and that is why they don't vote, don't register. They may have opinions on other political things, progressive, conservative, usually a mix one way or another, but this is their overriding concern with our political system. They might not vote because they have a despair that it would change anything.

I think that Sanders has appealed to these types of voters, regardless of how they think on other issues.. I think that if he was the nominee, he might get support from unexpected places because of his perceived integrity. I think that Trump appeals more than Clinton to these voters, because he claims to be funding his own campaign and says that makes him immune to special interests.

Clinton is viewed by these voters as the most compromised candidate. Much like Gore, Kerry and others, I have real doubts that she will rally the large parts of the electorate that have lost hope in the process. At least some of these voted for Obama, because Hope and Change. I think at least some of these people feel like they got sold a bill of goods with Obama.

Before people get all bent out of shape about it, I'm going hold my nose and vote for Hillary if she's the nominee, but I think Bill was a terrible President and I would expect more of the same. But Bernie, oh man, Bernie. He's the one that I wanted.
posted by jefeweiss at 6:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


I voted for Sanders here in Indiana, and I'll be voting for Trump in the fall. He can't possibly be an effective President, but she might be, and that's frightening.

Mikewarot, there are worse things than an "effective" president, and I think its pretty clear even since Trump clinched that he will is likely to reveal them. Its not enough to say that we will be safe because he will be "ineffective". Bush showed us how this works, Trump will give us multiples of those results.

The damage Trump will do is being telegraphed in every way. This little bunfight about his fraud lawsuit and the judge is already off the charts for Presidential respect for the rule of law. I'm not even going to invoke any of the defence issues and his psychology, or his stunning threat to Treasury markets with his NYC developer mindset statements.

Its clear that he is downright un-American in his understanding of constitutional norms, the US strategic view of the last half century, and how government debt markets work.

The lack of logic here about the dangers of Hillary in comparison to Trump is truly astounding.
posted by C.A.S. at 6:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [48 favorites]


this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.

Since it comes down to Hillary vs Donald, well, yep.
posted by dirtdirt at 6:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


How about: "Vote against fascism, or you are a bad person"?

The one place I poke my head out of my own little politically-like-minded bubble is my bad city-data.com habit and my city's discussion of this election is a tire fire. This city hasn't had a Republican mayor since the 30s but damn if there aren't Trump supporters all up in there blathering about his respect for "the little people" and "the common man." Both apparently are synonyms for "easily-conned middle class white dudes."
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


I lost all respect for the man as some kind of principled fighter for reform of the Democratic party a few months ago when he saw the writing on the wall that so many of his supporters refused to and abruptly stopped constantly complaining about superdelegates.

If this campaign has demonstrated nothing else, it has really highlighted the deep antipathy toward actual, messy, tedious little "d" democracy among the Democratic mainstream. I swear, the more Clinton supporters I talk to, the more I'm reminded of the quasi-fascist suburban Reagan Republicans of my youth. It's revolting.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:24 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Clinton is the Pragmatism candidate,
Sanders is the Idealism candidate,
Trump is the Racism/Nihilism candidate.

I certainly back Sanders over policy, and it makes sense for him to take his case all the way to the convention, considering it was Idealism that won in 2008.

But if I was a US voter*, you can be damn sure I would be voting pragmatically in the general, if that was my only option.

* every morning I light a candle below my massive portrait of Her Majesty, drink a shot of Rye, and thank my Northern Lights that I'm not.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:24 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Is "Never give Donald Trump access to all the power of a US President, including nuclear codes." an eloquently worded essay? Seems like more of a warning label.
posted by emjaybee at 6:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


When there aren't bad people poised on the brink of winning?
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]




Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020

Don't overlook the possibility they'll roll out Cyborg Dick Cheney, the Sixty Million Dollar Ubermann.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:28 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


also, the political benefit of the party convention as media coronation of the nominee is nil.

truth be told, if they can keep it polite, a "contested" democratic convention is likely to be good for Clinton in terms of publicity and coverage of issues, especially compared to Cleveland's upcoming second biggest garbage fire.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I truly don't understand those who make the Sanders to Trump leap. 

They both seem to stand for radical uphevals of the system. If you're life was ok trending down under Obama, or feels that way, Clinton can look like more of the same.

This really only works if you don't understand things in America.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:30 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


this is such an odd way to appeal to someone to support your candidate: vote for Hillary, or you are a bad person.

In addition to the people above who point out that you're twisting the words you quoted pretty hard, I'll just ask this: Where have you been? This has been the underlying message from both sides for a generation plus.
posted by Etrigan at 6:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


you seem to presume that I am totally obliged to vote for your candidate, regardless of any positions she supports, or even her politics in general.

You're not obliged to do anything. I'm going to work to stop a sociopathic, racist, misogynistic fascist. And encourage and hope that others do the same. If you feel somehow insulted by that, that's on you.
posted by chris24 at 6:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [54 favorites]


When there aren't bad people poised on the brink of winning?

In the two party system, that means never.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]




it makes sense for him (SANDERS) to take his case all the way to the convention, considering it was Idealism that won in 2008.

No, it doesn't really. It makes more sense for him to pack up and consolidate his arguments, and make the next plan while helping win this general election from this week forward.

Previous contested party conventions (Reagan/Ford in 1976) (Kennedy/Carter in 1980) did not help their parties in the general election, and both parties lost those elections.
posted by C.A.S. at 6:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


"contesting the convention" is just following Dem party rules for selecting the candidate. it's not some radical attack on the party.

Well, yes and no.

You're correct that Sanders would be perfectly within his rights as a candidate for the nomination to continue campaigning until the convention even if he has zero chance of actually winning the nomination.

But while that's not prohibited, it would certainly be a fairly large break from the tradition of the past 30 years. 2008's primary was much closer, but Clinton suspended her campaign a week after the CA primary. You'd have to go back to 1988 and Jesse Jackson to find a candidate who continued campaigning to the convention despite being unable to win.
posted by Coda at 6:33 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


you seem to presume that I am totally obliged to vote for your candidate, regardless of any positions she supports, or even her politics in general.

When your alternative is an openly racist proto-fascist who treats the rule of law with contempt, unless she happens to be an actual Nazi Party member and/or committed to the annihilation of the human race through nuclear war...yes. You can only get haughty about what people presume you are obliged to do because you are not actually in Trump's openly-declared cross-hairs, so lofty eighteenth-century political rhetoric doesn't seem like an obscene joke to you.
posted by praemunire at 6:35 AM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


Previous contested party conventions (Reagan/Ford in 1976) (Kennedy/Carter in 1980) did not help their parties in the general election, and both parties lost those elections.

There is no way the GOP was going to win an election post-Nixon, and and there is no way Carter was getting a 2nd term... Frankly, I'm surprised that Obama pulled it off. I wouldn't hang it on the conventions...
posted by mikelieman at 6:36 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


the man of twists and turns: This really only works if you don't understand things in America.

I don't understand this statement. Who is the "you" referring to? Those that feel Clinton is more of the same, or those who don't understand Bernie->Trump?
posted by bluecore at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2016


Any Tar Heels in the house, don't forget to vote in our second primary of the year! We have a chance to take back one of our branches of government from the bigots and the haters today, and turnout will be low, so your vote will count a lot!
posted by rikschell at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


It's really difficult to imagine Sanders actually taking it to the convention. He's earned a primetime speaking spot to address the entire nation at the convention, contesting would be throwing that away for nothing in return aside from looking like a fool.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]




I voted in New Jersey today. I'm just going to come out and say that I've actually started to like Hillary Clinton, something I wouldn't have said more than a couple months ago. I like her now. It bugs me that the media is perpetuating this idea that nobody actually likes Hillary, that they're just voting for her because she's the establishment and the or whatever. No, I voted for her because I think she would make a better president than Bernie Sanders, and I admire her. I feel good about my vote.
posted by wondermouse at 6:39 AM on June 7, 2016 [90 favorites]


Mod note: I'm really so sorry I didn't delete this post and ask for us to get one a bit later, once there was more news to actually discuss, and I apologize, but now, seriously, please drop all the making it personal stuff, the repetitive arguments that we've had over thousands of comments before, the Sanders/Clinton supporters suck stuff, the "bad person" arguments, and the whole "let's make it all about the that one 'I'm voting for Trump' guy." Etc. I understand feelings are high, but this thread is going be complete garbage for anyone who wants to talk about what's happening in the primaries today, so maybe vent your more over the top feelings elsewhere, and let's talk about election news here.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:41 AM on June 7, 2016 [54 favorites]


Any Tar Heels in the house, don't forget to vote in our second primary of the year!

Iowans too! The stupid Iowa Democratic party sent me a reminder about the primary this morning, which is a little late, guys. I already early voted last week, and people who aren't paying attention aren't going to have very much time to do research. But yeah: there's a primary in Iowa. There are some interesting races! If you live in Iowa, you should vote!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:41 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


AP called it

Not to derail the derails, but do the news companies get more than brownie points for "being first"?

Is there a demonstraited financial incentive to breaking the story, no matter how facile, made up, or repetitive (looking at you CNN downed plane BREAKING for the fifth week in a row)???

(Feel the Bern but vote for sane!)
posted by sammyo at 6:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Looks like Florida AG Pam Bondi may have solicited and recieved contributions from Trump before their investigation:
New York's attorney general says the evidence is compelling that Trump's get-rich seminars — promoted in both Florida and New York — were merely a "bait and switch scheme" where people paid thousands of dollars for promised training and insight they never received.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, however, decided not to act on similar complaints filed by Floridians.

She, however, did take money from Trump — while her office said it was "reviewing" the complaints against him. Three days after the Orlando Sentinel wrote a story in 2013 about Floridians who felt scammed by a Trump affiliate, Trump's charitable foundation gave $25,000 to one of Bondi's campaign committees.

It was wildly unethical for her to accept this money. No self-respecting prosecutor would take money from a potential target.

Bondi's office always claimed there wasn't enough evidence to make a case. But I wondered how hard her staff worked to actually find any.

So I asked to see her office's investigative reports for myself.

Her office took about four weeks to respond and then finally did so with a massive document dump — thousands of pages, many of which were exchanges with the press about why they weren't investigating now and stressing they never had. A copy of an email I sent back in 2013 was included 39 different times.

All told, they provided 8,491 pages of records.

Perhaps they thought no one would really look at them.

If so, they were wrong.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [48 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020

Ted Nugent and Walker, Texas Ranger.
posted by TwoStride at 6:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Sen. Jeff Merkley, the only fellow Senator to endorse Sanders: "We have to be unified to take on Trump. And that unity is going to begin today as soon as the polls close."
posted by zombieflanders at 7:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


hope he can swallow his pride, respect the presumptive nomination of our nation's first female major-party candidate, and join the fight. Or else Jeff Weaver better find himself a really amusing shirt to wear drunk on national TV.

While we're wishing, I vote for both honestly.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:05 AM on June 7, 2016


Mod note: Just a heads up that if you're making a comment that's within the parameters taz mentioned earlier, we'll be deleting it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:08 AM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


Paul Ryan is failing up through this party like Big Head. He will be running next.

If Trump loses, I second the idea that Ryan has the inside track to the nomination.

This is definitely the case. Here's the thing about it though: if Trump wins, there's a 90% chance that his presidency will be such a disaster that, if the USA is still an electoral democracy, (indeed, if the world is still inhabited by people, not radioactive mutants) in 2020, the GOP will likely never hold the office of president for the the lifetime of every living millenial. I wonder if his hemming-and-hawing and hedging and slow 'reluctant' support of Trump is calculated based on the theory of Trump losing, setting Ryan up to be the great savior of the GOP, returning it to sensibility and bullshit wonkishness in 2020. It's a scary thought, too, since we're in an age of deep dissatisfaction with the status-quo, and this means thath Clinton will have to really do some heavy lifting, heavier than Obama, to get some legislation passed to win a second term against a sensible smart-seeming white dude who promises a change for the better through the kind of plausible sounding independence and freedom bullshit that Americans just gobble up.
posted by dis_integration at 7:11 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020

Are kardashians republican or democrat? One of each?
posted by sammyo at 7:11 AM on June 7, 2016


Pfft, the Kardashians haven't had a viable candidate since Gul Dukat.
posted by xedrik at 7:15 AM on June 7, 2016 [50 favorites]


Finally, at long last, our interminable election season is coming to a middle.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:18 AM on June 7, 2016 [99 favorites]


The damage Trump will do is being telegraphed in every way. This little bunfight about his fraud lawsuit and the judge is already off the charts for Presidential respect for the rule of law.

Yes! I wish the media would really hold his feet to the fire on this issue. He holds the opinion that a "Mexican" Judge should not be allowed to preside over his, Trump's, trial. So far we have heard that he does believe that anyone of Mexican heritage is incapable of ruling fairly as well as Muslims. Nobody has asked him about women or other minorities yet. And how does he feel about white men presiding over the trials involving all minorities and women since the country began? Does he feel that they have always been fair and impartial?

Any Tar Heels in the house, don't forget to vote in our second primary of the year!

I am extremely curious to see what happens with Renee Ellmers. I was represented by David Price (D) until they changed the boundaries in 2010. Renee Ellmers, backed by the Tea Party and Koch money won the election to become my Representative. Now they have changed the boundaries back, I will happily vote for Price to continue to represent me and Ellmers is up against Congressman George Holding-- another Republican. The most interesting aspect of this race is that Ellmers did not vote in lockstep with the Tea Party (for example she did not vote to shut the government down) so now they are opposing her, however, Trump is endorsing her. So it boils down to Tea Party vs. Trump. Who holds more sway with the voters of District 2 in Wake County? I will keep you posted.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:19 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


All I know is that I've been a registered Democrat since I was 18 years old, and now 22 years later when I went to vote here in the NJ primary, I was dropped from the rolls. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 7:20 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


California voter. I will be leaving work at noon to vote. I will then be picking up my mother-in-law and taking her to her polling place. I will then take a selfie of the two of us with "I voted" stickers and take her for some Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream. I am then going to sit back and wait for Hillary's triumphant speech in Jersey.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:20 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


If Clinton goes two terms and is reasonably competent, and the person to run after her is reasonably competent, I would still feel optimistic about a Dem victory because the Republicans have systematically rooted out people who are reasonably competent from their party as a matter of principle. And the country will have gotten browner in the meantime, another constituency the Republicans have attempted to root out.

But that's counting a whooooole lot of unhatched chickens, so.
posted by emjaybee at 7:21 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

Given the trend towards cartoonishly evil supervillain millionaires, Vladimir Putin, obviously.
posted by sour cream at 7:21 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


"...the battle for Middle Earth is about to begin. All our hopes now lie with two little hobbits, somewhere in the wilderness."
posted by Bob Regular at 7:21 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Here's the thing about it though: if Trump wins, there's a 90% chance that his presidency will be such a disaster that, if there the USA is still an electoral democracy, (indeed, if the world is still inhabited by non-radioactive mutants) in 2020, the GOP will likely never hold the office of president for the the lifetime of every living millenial.

I could not disagree more.

Not about the disaster part -- that's a given. But if Trump manages to win and the nation survives, in 2020 the Republican Party has many built-in layers of cognitive dissonance deniability. Trump was never One Of Us. Trump was never a True Conservative. Trump was opposed by Responsible Republicans from day one. Trump supported Democrats in the past and had liberal leanings all along. Truly, you can't blame the Real Republican Party for Trump, can you? We've been here all along promoting Conservative Policy and trying to get Real Conservatives Elected and holding our ground in the House, which is now the last bastion of True Conservatism on a national level. Trump was swept in by angry rabble-rousers, not us. Meanwhile, our Republican governors and state legislatures and local legislatures and school boards have been quietly turning America into Brownback's Kansas one inch at a time and VOTE FOR US for more of that but with a REAL CONSERVATIVE PRESIDENT this time!

[Trump] What do you mean 'with a Real Conservative President,' I'M the Presid-- *yanked offstage by a very large hook-pole*
posted by delfin at 7:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


. I will then be picking up my mother-in-law and taking her to her polling place. I will then take a selfie of the two of us with "I voted" stickers

Our polling place didn't have stickers :( Guess they only bring out the stickers for the general election.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:25 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

The Hon. Senator Skeletor, R. Florida?

Or you know, Ted Cruz.
posted by happyroach at 7:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm "disappointed" that the first female major party Presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton rather than another woman I admire more, but it's the kind of disappointment you feel when you win the $700 million Powerball and find out you have to split the prize with another person. I'm still ecstatic that the day I've been waiting for my whole life is about to be here.

Lately I've been likening this to the Supreme Court glass ceiling - we got Justice O'Connor before we got Justice Ginsburg.
posted by sallybrown at 7:27 AM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


All I know is that I've been a registered Democrat since I was 18 years old, and now 22 years later when I went to vote here in the NJ primary, I was dropped from the rolls.

Not sure how NJ works, but in NY if you don't vote in two elections in a row and then don't respond to/miss a card trying to confirm you're still at that address, you get dropped. If that might apply.
posted by chris24 at 7:27 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


If/when Trump fails in November, I think there's a chance (maybe 0.5%) that he'll start his own political party called--what else?--the Trump Party, which will run candidates in Congressional and state-level races here and there across the country. There will be no ideology per se, though nativism and xenophobia will be the party's true hallmarks. All candidates will be groomed and approved by Trump personally. In the end, the entire enterprise will have turned out to be a scheme to promote the Trump brand (because megalomania) and to enrich Trump at the expense of hundreds of thousands of low-income donors.
posted by duffell at 7:28 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Dispatch from WASP "I work in finance" town for those who like anecdata - not a single one of my conservative relatives will be voting for Trump. They were very offended when my father even asked the question. They're all deciding between staying home and voting for Clinton - the cousin of mine who once called her the c-word has decided she's not that bad, after all.
posted by sallybrown at 7:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Our polling place didn't have stickers

Then I will make stickers because I promised the old bat that there would be selfies with stickers and Baskin Robbins.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:30 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


I voted several weeks ago, thanks to my mail ballot, but holy smokes, did you see the Californian senate election?

34 freaking candidates and you're supposed to keep track of all their numbers and then mark only one tiny bubble?

Also, I always vote "Yes" for any ballot measure that raises taxes to help fund things. Why? Because muahahahahaha I don't pay L.A. County taxes.
posted by Katemonkey at 7:30 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm still ecstatic that the day I've been waiting for my whole life is about to be here.

I woke up so excited for the awesome speech she will be giving today.
posted by zutalors! at 7:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


In response to dances_with _sneeches' question about how Trump properties are viewed elsewhere.
posted by peppermind at 7:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yesterday I got an email from one of my editors asking if I could work on a piece about people who historically swore that a woman could never be president. I ended up focusing on Shirley Chisholm, who took it all the way to the convention in 1972 despite the indifference and mockery of her fellows. Tellingly, it was hard to research until I started searching for "Mrs. Chisholm." (No, her counterparts were not referred to in that form.)

Anyway, writing that piece (which is live today in TIME, search for it!) made me remember what a historic moment this is. Less than 45 years ago, we lived in a world that published a woman's weight and talked about how she was shockingly articulate for such a little woman. We lived in a world where people claimed that a woman should step aside to give men a chance (in Chisholm's case, black men, since apparently it was impossible to have a campaign that incorporated two demographics at once). People already knew to veil their most overt sexism—well, except for the doctor who publicly worried at a DNC committee event that menopausal women could get America into another world war. That is the world we lived in.

I am 35 years old, and ever since I was a little girl I have realized that a woman has never been president. Until today, I don't think I thought she could be. Let your politics be what they may, but today is a day to acknowledge a historic moment. Clinton may not end up being president, but as presumptive nominee she is doing something that has never been seen before in the United States. She is not only "Mrs. Clinton"—she is the former Secretary of State and a formidable political force. Think of what today means for our daughters. I hope they grow up in a world where they never, ever have to question whether a woman can do that.

Anyway, it's all hitting me like a ton of bricks (and straight in the feels). While I was researching my piece, I read tons of quips and comebacks by the very take-no-prisoners, gives-no-fucks Chisholm. This one feels particularly appropriate today on this day of transition:
“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud; I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.”
posted by mynameisluka at 7:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [141 favorites]


I'm "disappointed" that the first female major party Presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton rather than another woman I admire more, but it's the kind of disappointment you feel when you win the $700 million Powerball and find out you have to split the prize with another person. I'm still ecstatic that the day I've been waiting for my whole life is about to be here.

Exactly. She doesn't have to be perfect, she just has to be first. We will have others later, and maybe we'll like them better.

(though I've come around to liking her)
posted by emjaybee at 7:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


I would honestly expect a sizable subset of the Sanders voters to switch to Jill Stein before voting for Trump OR Clinton. Particularly if Clinton is expected to win by a large margin over Trump.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 7:33 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Green Party is only on the ballot in 21 states, though.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 7:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Punkey: Since first-past-the-post guarantees that there will only ever be two viable candidates

I'll insert the usual Canadian note here: This is manifestly not true, even if it seems to be logically watertight. The US is the only place I know of where it seems to be true. There are more counter-examples than there are examples of this phenomenon. (Canadian example: In the 29 federal elections we've had since WWI, the winning party has only gotten more than 50% of the vote 5 times. In the last election, 33 seats were won with less than 35% of the vote, and another 36 seats were won with less than 40% of the vote. It's not hard to have more than two viable candidates in first-past-the-post; it's only hard in the U.S.)
posted by clawsoon at 7:39 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Great article, mynameisluka. Worth reading.

Andrew Tully was right in the best way possible.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:40 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm very pleased we'll be taking our four year old daughter with us to vote for Hillary Clinton today.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:41 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


I know this is a joke, but holy crap that's what it's like over at a bunch of subreddits. Of course, as recently as last week the first page of subs like /r/politics were half-full of alleged Bernie supporters posting links to Breitbart, so...

This election has basically broken Reddit for me. Between /r/The_Donald's racist meme and lies and nonsense and /r/SandersforPresident's conspiracy theory leaking everywhere, the whole site is a mess.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:41 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


I would honestly expect a sizable subset of the Sanders voters to switch to Jill Stein before voting for Trump OR Clinton. Particularly if Clinton is expected to win by a large margin over Trump.

That's basically where I'm at. There's very little chance that Trump will take Minnesota so I don't see a downside in voting for Dr Stein in the general. On the flip side my parents are democrats who live in a republican stronghold state; they might vote libertarian just because the libertarians are a greater threat to Trump in their state.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:44 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I just voted in California! And I got a sticker! Yay! There wasn't much of a line at 7:30 am (one person ahead of me and one behind me, plus two others dropping off vote by mail ballots) so now I have time to go get coffee.

And omg the Senate race. It helps that there are really only two serious candidates, but I started to read all the statements in the voter guide for shits and giggles and by the time I got to page three I was like "hold me." Statements in voter guides are terrifying.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Reddit was shit before the election and will be shit after. Avoid the usual suspects that are god awful.

Twitter is also becoming a tire fire where people engage in the lamest form of conspiracy theories and the get retweeted to death.

4chan of course is boiling over with lame /pol/tards doing endless cuckold memes.

Oh well at least I will always have Metafilter until the mods depose cortex after having to moderate too many political threads. I guess at least we aren't discussing tipping or chicago vs nyc pizza as well.
posted by vuron at 7:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


In the 29 federal elections we've had since WWI, the winning party has only gotten more than 50% of the vote 5 times.

What does that have to do with anything? When was the last time a US president got more than 50% of the popular vote?
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:49 AM on June 7, 2016


2012?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


1964, for one.
posted by y2karl at 7:51 AM on June 7, 2016


Gosh. I almost feel sorry for Paul Ryan. This election sure is strange.
posted by R343L at 7:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Okay, apparently it happens more than I thought. But still, Clinton was elected with less than 50% both times. George W Bush the first time. Kennedy. Nixon. Truman... US presidents frequently get elected with less than 50% of the popular vote too. Doesn't mean we have a viable third party.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:55 AM on June 7, 2016


Only 16 out of 57 presidential elections have gone to a candidate who got less than a majority of the popular vote.

I think the point is that FPTP doesn't guarantee a two-party lock, not that FPTP guarantees third parties.
posted by Etrigan at 7:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Reporting in from the city of angels: a short line, including a toddler getting an extra I Voted sticker and hopefully a life-long love of democracy; no problems. Stickers were abundant! My only regret is that I can't donate my sticker to decorations like this because this year more than ever, I'm thankful and grateful for my right to vote.
posted by jetlagaddict at 7:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


What is truly weird and perplexing is when the winning presidential candidate has fewer votes than the loser.
posted by beau jackson at 7:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'll insert the usual Canadian note here: This is manifestly not true, even if it seems to be logically watertight.

I'll add another Canadian opinion and say "yes, it's completely true." All multi-party systems do with first-past-the-post is fracture the votes of the left wing and the right wing. The NDP has never been in power and never will be because the Liberals exist; it would take the near-total-collapse of the Liberals in order for the NDP to rise into governance. This nearly happened in 2011 and the NDP still didn't come close. In 1993, the Progressive Conservatives collapsed into near-nothingness and the right-wing vote was fractured for a decade between the PCs and the Reform Party.

Saying that "you can have more than two viable candidates in FPTP systems" is meaningless because we don't actually have more than two viable governing parties, and we never will. There have only ever been two viable options - going by the numbers, not political values - for governance in this country: the Liberals and whichever right-wing party is the Not-Liberals at the time.

There's a reason the Liberals are now exploring the enactment of single transferable vote, and a reason the Conservative Party is fighting like hell to try to prevent Trudeau from enacting it: single transferable vote means the effective end of Tory governance in Canada, because the left-wing vote in Canada is about 10-15% larger than the right-wing vote and barring the occasional case of a center-swing election caused by Liberal fatigue, that's always been the case; the Tories have almost never won an election where the Liberals and NDP (and to a lesser extent the Bloc and Greens) didn't dramatically split the left-wing vote.
posted by mightygodking at 7:59 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Gosh. I almost feel sorry for Paul Ryan. This election sure is strange.

They got it on tape? Great! If Ryan runs in 2020 or whenever, just put out an ad cutting together him crying crocodile tears about racism with the admission that he still supports Trump. Better yet, make him keep on saying it again and again throughout the campaign so that we can have a supercut.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


this primary is so obviously generational...
posted by judson at 8:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


While Clinton is not my preferred Dem candidate, I'll be still be voting for her (via absentee ballot) come November should she clinch the nomination. I mean, that's a no-brainer. The only other options--voting Republican (cold day in Hell there) and not voting--are not feasible and not doing my part in the process.
posted by Kitteh at 8:04 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


He holds the opinion that a "Mexican" Judge should not be allowed to preside over his, Trump's, trial. So far we have heard that he does believe that anyone of Mexican heritage is incapable of ruling fairly as well as Muslims. Nobody has asked him about women or other minorities yet

Trump Spokesperson Suggests Trump's Sister Could be Biased as Judge
posted by nubs at 8:06 AM on June 7, 2016


OnceUponATime: What does that have to do with anything? When was the last time a presidential candidate in the US got more than 50% of the vote?

2012. :-) And 2008, and 2004, and 18 of 24 times since WWI. (On preview, what everybody else said.)

More to the point, 10 Canadian elections have been won with less than 40% of the popular vote, something no American President has done since Lincoln. First past the post doesn't need to condemn you to two parties. Believing that your only choice is to vote for the lesser evil does.

First-past-the-post should make third parties stronger, because it's more prone to electoral freaks that crush top parties or launch third parties.

(The fact that you have so few third-party winners at the state level is the really crazy thing. I wonder if it has something to do with the strong-president/governor system. Did the Latin American countries which copied the US system have the same feeble third parties?)
posted by clawsoon at 8:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


A lesson is learned, but the damage is irreversible.
posted by penduluum at 8:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


> I just voted in California! And I got a sticker!

Me too! The line was very short when I got there a few minutes after the polls opened. I had my printouts of who/what/how to vote on the various peoples and initiatives, so aside from making sure I didn't vote for too many DCCC candidates, it all went pretty quick.
posted by rtha at 8:09 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I never get a sticker when I vote. WTF Pennsylvania?
posted by octothorpe at 8:12 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


If somehow the Trump U scandal blew up enough to reveal bribes to our scumbag Texas Gov. and to Florida's AG, and it actually did them some damage, that would be a marvelous thing. I know better than to assume justice will ever happen, especially in those states, but damn. It would be a nice three-fer.
posted by emjaybee at 8:13 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted; rewinding to remove a few "the FBI will get Clinton/she's unelectable" and "Sanders is turrible/he's unelectable"; if you haven't been around in the other threads these points have been made absolutely ad nauseam, they are both well represented views.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:13 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think the difference is that, in the absence of a parliamentary system, third party candidates are essentially powerless to influence policy in a substantive way. In a parliamentary system, if one party doesn't get an outright majority of seats in parliament, it's possible to form a coalition government, and then those smaller parties often have a disproportionate influence, as they can threaten to cause collapse of the government if they don't get their way on key issues that matter to them. I see that happen all the time in the Indian government. If coalitions cannot be formed, the non major party candidates are basically always in opposition, unable to really influence policy.
posted by peacheater at 8:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Did the Latin American countries which copied the US system have the same feeble third parties?

Mostly presidential systems falter and collapse [PDF].
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm really hoping this news doesn't keep Hillary supporters from casting their vote today because Democrats do not need anymore wind in Bernie's futile momentum!!!! sails, which is why the Hillary campaign was rightly slightly put off by the timing of the announcement. But whatever, it's done.

So: FIRST FEMALE CANDIDATE FROM A MAJOR PARTY HOLY SHIT OMG YES. It was a long time coming, America. Here's to hoping my 2 year old daughter grows up knowing intrinsically that women can obviously be presidents because, duh, mom, Hillary.
posted by lydhre at 8:18 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Idiocracy was a documentary.

I did notice an Elizondo running for the U.S. Senate in California.
posted by ryanrs at 8:18 AM on June 7, 2016


I'd take the extremely delightful and progressive Terry Crews over literally any Republican (and most Democrats) if he ran.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


mightygodking: Saying that "you can have more than two viable candidates in FPTP systems" is meaningless because we don't actually have more than two viable governing parties, and we never will.

I'm going to respectfully disagree. You can see on a provincial level that first past the post makes third parties viable in Canada in a way that it (for whatever reason) doesn't in the U.S. And given poll numbers last spring, we could've well had an NDP government had Layton still been alive, or if the niqab debate in Quebec had fallen out slightly differently.

the Tories have almost never won an election where the Liberals and NDP (and to a lesser extent the Bloc and Greens) didn't dramatically split the left-wing vote.

You're making the assumption that the Liberals are a left-wing party. Through the '90s, they were right-wing. They're a way-the-wind-blows party. (That's how they managed to govern Canada for more of the 20th century than the Communists governed Russia.)

However, you make a good point, and you've got me reconsidering what's counted as the typical Tory way to win. The traditional wisdom was that the Tories won in tired-of-the-Liberals landslides, with 50%+ of the popular vote, a la Diefenbaker and Mulroney. But Harper re-wrote that script, didn't he?

Anyway, we are somewhat off topic, which is mostly my fault. There does seem to be something in the water in the U.S. that causes people to panic if they don't have one of two people to rally around. That's how they've ended up with so many otherwise-sensible Republicans endorsing Trump.
posted by clawsoon at 8:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the U.S. is notable for being one of the only countries that divides power between the legislative and exective branches to not have expedienced a major constitutional crisis arising from a conflict between the executive and the legislature.

Something tells me that is about to change, to be honest.
posted by eagles123 at 8:25 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]



AP called it

Not to derail the derails, but do the news companies get more than brownie points for "being first"?


The NBC Decision Desk chief was on MSNBC last night and said that the AP called it for Trump as soon as he had the delegates, so they did the same for the Democrats. They said they didn't expect either campaign to be happy with the decision but they did it anyway.
posted by zutalors! at 8:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist" - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) on CNN just now
posted by zombieflanders at 8:29 AM on June 7, 2016




The NBC Decision Desk chief was on MSNBC last night and said that the AP called it for Trump as soon as he had the delegates, so they did the same for the Democrats. They said they didn't expect either campaign to be happy with the decision but they did it anyway.

Yeah, as aggravating as it may be, the news organizations are just doing their job, which is to seek out and report the, y'know, news.

The people to be pissed at here are the superdelegates who couldn't manage to shut the fuck up for another 24 hours, but just had to make themselves feel important or whatever when the AP surveyed them.
posted by dersins at 8:32 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


"You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist" - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) in CNN just now

Projection, thy name is Republicans.

I doubt Trump is disciplined enough to apply any strategy consistently, but it'll be interesting to see how often Republicans try attempts from Rove's playbook, like the one zombieflanders just cited: Accuse one's opponents of your own flaws. And how badly those attempts will fail, like that one.

Seriously, does Zeldin seriously think his contention will play with anyone who doesn't already have a downloaded jpg of Obama photoshopped as a witch doctor, or is he just trying to play to the media's well known "both sides do it" bias?
posted by Gelatin at 8:34 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]




The whole Trump attacking the judge fiasco has just been so gobsmacking ridiculous. It's unprecedented Springtime For Hitler shit.
Rebuking a release from campaign staff mid interview, calling them not smart, and telling everyone to keep attacking!

But here is what I tend to check each morning:
Sam Wang's numbers at http://election.princeton.edu/ (Obama at +5 approval, 4% EV meta-margin, 70% Clinton Nov. probability)
TPM's chart (Clinton +4.2)
this huffpo aggregated chart (Clinton +5.0)
posted by Theta States at 8:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


So my issue with the Democratic primary is this.

According to Google, Clinton has 1,812 Pledged delegates. Sanders has 1,521.

So that's a slightly less than 300 delegates. Less than CA's pledged delegates as a whole.
Now, especially in the last few primaries, Clinton and Sanders have been fairly close in the amount of delegates won in each primary. If the Superdelegates were actually being...I don't know...democratic about this processes, Sanders should have almost half of all those Clinton Superdelegates, putting them in a much closer overall position.

But he doesn't, because the Superdelegates get to vote for whomever they want. Sanders could sweep CA and the other primaries today, and he'd still be about 150 (100 short with Supers) pledged delegates short of the 2,383 needed for nomination. Leaving Clinton STILL closer to the nomination as long as her Superdelegates refuse to shift their votes to reflect the will of the voters.

How is this democratic? How is this right? How is anyone OK with this? I'm honestly super angry and confused about this. I've never trusted either party, but this is actively making me dislike the Democratic party.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 8:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


"You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist" - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) on CNN just now

OR YOU COULD ARGUE THAT HE IS LITERALLY A MANTIS SHRIMP AND HIS CLUBCLAW HITS WITH A BULLET'S FORCE
posted by dersins at 8:40 AM on June 7, 2016 [36 favorites]


Our two candidates in 2024: Accelerando's Elevated Lobsters' minister on the far left vs the left of center Mantis Shrimp prime.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Pretend superdelegates don't exist. Sanders could sweep every state today and he'd still be solidly behind, because of proportional delegate allocation. Clinton is winning because more people are voting for her. Period.
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:43 AM on June 7, 2016 [68 favorites]


How is this democratic? How is this right? How is anyone OK with this? I'm honestly super angry and confused about this.

Supers have shifted their votes before when a candidate has won more pledged delegates. A big chunk of Clinton superdelegates switched to Obama in 2008 after he pulled ahead in the pledged delegate count, but not before.

Superdelegates have never used their votes to get an overall count that reverses what the outcome would be from pledged delegate counts alone.
posted by maudlin at 8:43 AM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


How is this democratic? How is this right? How is anyone OK with this?

Because if you eliminate the superdelegates completely from the equation, if superdelegates did not exist and did not have a vote, Clinton would still win. By a plurality of the votes and a plurality of the delegates, as you do in a democracy.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 8:44 AM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


Pretend superdelegates don't exist. Sanders could sweep every state today and he'd still be solidly behind, because of proportional delegate allocation. Clinton is winning because more people are voting for her. Period.

But if super delegates didn't exist, we have no idea what the race would look like, because many voters are swayed by where the super delgates have pledged, and what the media reports as the current delegate count
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

Larry Craig might be ready for a big comeback. So to speak.
posted by aught at 8:45 AM on June 7, 2016


Superdelegates have never used their votes to get an overall count that reverses what the outcome would be from pledged delegate counts alone.

That is why they exist, though. It's the panic button. The problem is it invites rules-lawyering about what conditions justify pressing the button. Some draw the line at Trump or a Trump-like candidate, some draw the line at "I joined the Democrats so I could compete for their nomination but didn't get enough votes."
posted by tonycpsu at 8:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


I'm really curious to know which actual human being voters take the temperature of the superdelegates before deciding who to support.
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [51 favorites]


Sanders could sweep CA and the other primaries today, and he'd still be about 150 (100 short with Supers) pledged delegates short of the 2,383 needed for nomination. Leaving Clinton STILL closer to the nomination as long as her Superdelegates refuse to shift their votes to reflect the will of the voters.

How is this democratic? How is this right? How is anyone OK with this? I'm honestly super angry and confused about this. I've never trusted either party, but this is actively making me dislike the Democratic party.

Because, leaving aside the likelihood that Sanders won't actually be sweeping the primaries today, the will of the voters has been expressed such that Clinton has something like 4 million primary votes more than Sanders. It's Sanders who has been talking about overturning the will of the voters, by getting superdelegates to switch to him based on some perception of "momentum," despite the fact that the actual delegate math is relentlessly against him.

It's arguable that superdelegates aren't democratic, but I'd point out that if the Republicans had such a system, they might well have been able to keep the racist, sexist dumpster fire of the Trump campaign from carrying their standard, behind which their other candidates are dutifully marching.
posted by Gelatin at 8:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


many voters are swayed by where the super delgates have pledged, and what the media reports as the current delegate count

Is there any kind of factual proof of this? Studies or the like? Polls?
posted by sallybrown at 8:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


many voters are swayed by where the super delgates have pledged, and what the media reports as the current delegate count


That is a significant goal-post shift from the original question.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


According to Google, Clinton has 1,812 Pledged delegates. Sanders has 1,521.

So that's a slightly less than 300 delegates. Less than CA's pledged delegates as a whole.
Now, especially in the last few primaries, Clinton and Sanders have been fairly close in the amount of delegates won in each primary. If the Superdelegates were actually being...I don't know...democratic about this processes, Sanders should have almost half of all those Clinton Superdelegates, putting them in a much closer overall position.


So, here's the thing. In this fantasy world in which superdelegates are awarded in the exact same proportions as regular delegates, Clinton's lead would be proportionally the exact same as it is now, meaning Sanders would still need to win California and New Jersey by like fifty points to even come close.

Which, while perhaps theoretically possible in the sense that the arithmetic is correct, is about as realistic as my mom winning the CA primary as a write-in candidate AND winning the Powerball on the same day.
posted by dersins at 8:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


because many voters are swayed by where the super delgates have pledged, and what the media reports as the current delegate count

What? I've never once heard this mentioned as a statistically-significant factor in voter decisions.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's unfalsifiable, but it's reasonable to believe that media reports of delegate counts that include superdelegates would affect how people might vote. My gut says it's a very small factor, certainly not large enough to overcome Sanders' deficit, but there's no way of knowing with any certainty. However, it's not an argument that helps Sanders, because he was against superdelegates before he was for them.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Gary Johnson is polling on the verge of the debate threshold

Please please please.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


what the media reports as the current delegate count

At least in the media I’ve been consuming, there’s always been a pretty dang bright line drawn between pledged and super delegates.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:52 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


All those supers who supported Clinton early in the 2008 primaries didn't seem to make people less inclined to vote for Obama. Once he was in the lead for pledged delegates, he stayed in the lead.
posted by maudlin at 8:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


I hope Clinton wins big in California just so it increases the odds Sanders ends his campaign.
Right now Clinton is over +4% against Trump. Just imagine the numbers 2 weeks after Sanders is out?
posted by Theta States at 8:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


As far as places becoming awful thanks to Trump, the waiting for game chatroom in StarCraft II has become total shit. There's always several Trump supporters spamming the chat with lots of crap. I'm not sure how much is actual support and how much is just trolling, but either way I find while waiting for a game I typically have to mute three to five users just to keep the chat screen from filling entirely with pro-Trump stuff.

And by "pro-Trump stuff" I mean mostly mindless crap like simply repeating his name (in all caps of course), over and over. Or spelling it out one letter per line to maximize the space it fills up in the screen. Or two or three of them collaborating on a "WHO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL?" "MEXICO!" call and response.

Anyway, I do hope that Sanders admits reality after the California votes are counted. I voted for him in the Texas primary, but I've been wanting him to concede for weeks now.

And the idea that somehow Sanders can, or should, overturn the will of the Democratic voters with the power of superdelegates is both sexist and profoundly anti-democratic. I fully support ending the superdelegate system, but using them to overturn the will of the voters is such a terrible idea I'm still stunned that anyone is advocating for it.
posted by sotonohito at 8:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


If reporting superdelegate totals is enough to affect a race, a strong candidate and campaigner like Obama can overcome that alleged deficit. In 2008 Clinton had an early lead in open superdelegate endorsements but lost even some early states.
posted by muddgirl at 8:55 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Despite assertions to the contrary Sanders will not keep Clinton from viability in California. In fact it's likely that Clinton will win in California and Nj at a minimum.

Sanders is selling a bullshit scenario because he and Tad Devine don't want fundraising to crater.

Same with the idea that Sanders is a better GE candidate despite having almost no cash on hand and no super Pacs and zero negative ads against him.

Sanders is a good guy and I like some of his positions but he's done and calling Hillary Clinton undemocratic is total bullshit.
posted by vuron at 8:55 AM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


And by "pro-Trump stuff" I mean mostly mindless crap like simply repeating his name (in all caps of course), over and over. Or spelling it out one letter per line to maximize the space it fills up in the screen. Or two or three of them collaborating on a "WHO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL?" "MEXICO!" call and response.

Sounds like the perfect way to alienate potential voters.

Clinton should hire a few clipboard people to stand on busy street corners during rush hour and approach people with the whole "Do you have a few minutes to talk about Donald Trump?"
posted by sallybrown at 8:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


In previous races I think they've always given combined totals. But this year I only saw those combined totals after Iowa and New Hampshire. Bernie responded by pointing out (accurately) that those superdelegates didn't really vote until July and shouldn't be counted one way or the other yet, and news organizations mostly seemed to realize that he had a point, and reported superdelegates and pledged delegates separately after that point, at least the ones I watched/read.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sanders is selling a bullshit scenario because he and Tad Devine don't want fundraising to crater.

I’m not saying directing those dollars you had earmarked for Sanders at paying off peoples’ outstanding medical debts instead is a great idea, but if donors wanted to take a cue from John Oliver…
posted by Going To Maine at 9:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Because, leaving aside the likelihood that Sanders won't actually be sweeping the primaries today, the will of the voters has been expressed such that Clinton has something like 4 million primary votes more than Sanders. It's Sanders who has been talking about overturning the will of the voters, by getting superdelegates to switch to him based on some perception of "momentum," despite the fact that the actual delegate math is relentlessly against him.

Yeah, the momentum argument is so ludicrous that I can't believe people can make it with a straight face.

If the Cavs had scored 10 points in a row to end game 2 of the NBA finals, they still would have lost to Golden State by 23 points. Should they be declared the winner because "momentum?"
posted by dersins at 9:00 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


From the article: "Trump's charitable foundation gave $25,000 to one of Bondi's campaign committees."

Wait a minute, are they missing the lead? Maybe the article is being loose with terminology but it is flat out illegal for a 501(c)(3) charity to give money to political activities.
posted by JackFlash at 9:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Democracy is messy and I'm sure the super delegate system could be improved. I'd be all for party rules that says a super delegate loses their vote if they share their support before some percent of regular delegates are assigned or any number of hacks to make the super delegates a true escape hatch to make sure the party's candidate is within the norms of the party and not an extreme outsider (like Trump, not Sanders).

Anyway I am super excited about the possibility of a woman president. Big smiling selfie posted to social media excited. I was considering attending a campaign event today for some minor state position tonight I think because I feel less cynical.
posted by R343L at 9:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


You can see on a provincial level that first past the post makes third parties viable in Canada in a way that it (for whatever reason) doesn't in the U.S.

Not really. I think you're conflating the fact that different parties have won leadership races with the viability of FPTP for a multiparty system, and that just ain't so.

What FPTP does, realistically, is create two "slots" for parties to compete. Those slots can be filled by any two parties, they don't have to necessarily be the Tories or Liberals (although they usually are), but realistically almost every election in Canadian history comes down to a competition between the occupants of those two slots - one slot for the "right" party (usually centre-right, to gain as much ideological advantage as possible and as wide a swath of the electorate as possible) and one for the "left" party (centre-left). Parties can and do collapse and lose their "slot," but the party that replaces them inevitably drifts to the politics of that "slot," moderating themselves for electoral advantage.

Take BC, for example. Right now there are two parties in BC who are electorally viable: the BC Liberals, who are distinct from the regular Liberal Party (right) and the NDP (left). The BC Liberals were not an electoral force in British Columbia until the Social Credit Party, who used to occupy the "right" slot in BC politics, collapsed after the Vander Zalm scandals. The SoCreds died as an electoral force quickly, because the BC Liberals became the new ascendant "right" party; in fact, the reason they died so quickly is because the 1991 BC election had the BC Liberals and SoCreds splitting the centre-right vote, which let the NDP back into power. All of the other parties are effectively protest parties.

This is the case in most of Canada. Federally, it's the Tories and the Liberals (with the 1990s being an interesting period as the PCs and Reform fought for control of the "right" slot before eventually unifying). In Manitoba, it's the NDP and Tories taking the "left" and "right" slots, with the Liberals mostly a tiny third party for most of the last sixty years (a brief flare-up in the 80s gave the Tories some easy wins). In Saskatchewan, it's the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party, who took the PC's "right" slot. In New Brunswick and Newfoundland and PEI it's the Tories and Liberals. In Quebec it's the Parti Quebecois and the Liberals; the CAQ (and ADQ before it) have threatened to take one of the slots from the PQ or the Grits, but it looks like they've been relegated to protest-party status and unless they make a decisive move in the next election they'll probably get tagged with the whiff of electoral failure. Alberta right now is in a transition stage as the PCs start collapsing and Wildrose takes the "right" slot from them, while the NDP is consolidating its hold on the "left" slot.

Really, the only reason anybody takes the multiparty idea seriously is that Ontario is the biggest province in the country and it's the outlier because the NDP managed to contend as a major political party for years, and even win an election, but that was mostly down to the individual political talents of Stephen Lewis and then Bob Rae rather than demonstrating a loophole or entry point in the general two-party optimization that FPTP demands - which shows when you see the general stench of failure that has accompanied the Ontario NDP for the past twenty years despite an electoral landscape that ought to ostensibly favour them, and Andrea Horwath's desperate attempts to tack to the center because that's where the votes are.
posted by mightygodking at 9:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


I'd take the extremely delightful and progressive Terry Crews over literally any Republican (and most Democrats) if he ran.

Good news. We are going to get a little President Camacho in this election. Cohen called Judge and they decided to seize the moment and write campaign ads for Camacho satirizing Trump.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:02 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Cohen called Judge and they decided to seize the moment and write campaign ads for Camacho satirizing Trump.

I mean, all they really need to do is take actual things Trump says and sub in Camacho's face and name.
posted by dersins at 9:05 AM on June 7, 2016


And, despite my early support for Sanders and my general feeling that Clinton represents the status quo in essential economic issues, I am happy to finally see a woman as the candidate for a major political party and the likely winner in the general. As Tychus Findlay once said, in radically different circumstances, "hell, it's about time". Just to keep with the StarCraft theme of my earlier post.

sallybrown Which is one reason why I'm not sure if they're actual (if foolhardy and obnoxious) Trump supporters or just trolls.
posted by sotonohito at 9:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist" - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) on CNN just now

You could just as easily argue that the moon is made of cheese. And I have a feeling that if we wait just a little longer, one of the remaining Trump supporters is going to make exactly that argument.
posted by sour cream at 9:08 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Even the current "liberal" status quo is literally killing us, and Clinton is somewhat to Obama's right on a number of issues, particularly foreign policy (where the president can actually make a difference in our gridlocked system). But electing a woman president is also a huge milestone, and of course Trump would be a catastrophe. I'm happy that others can be positively excited for casting their general vote, but excitement or not, I'm ready to do my best -- not just voting, but activism. And once Clinton is elected we can get to work pushing her away from her natural inclinations towards centrism. Politics is work. Voting is the easy part.
posted by chortly at 9:12 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


I haven't seen this commentary from Glenn Greenwald posted yet, and I think it's relevant. Regardless of which candidate one does or doesn't prefer, yesterday's crowing announcement by the AP seemed, um, misguided at best.
posted by vverse23 at 9:12 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


and and there is no way Carter was getting a 2nd term

Total historical revisionism. As late as early October, Carter was leading in national opinion polls. It's amazing how much the Reaganites managed to rewrite the facts of Carter's presidency. Though inflation was high, real average wages grew faster, job creation was higher, unemployment lower, and by pretty much every measure the economy performed better during his term than it did under Reagan. It wasn't broadly that good again until the 90s. However, since the rich white men weren't outstripping the gains of the poor and minorities by 10-20x, the narrative was all about how the economy was shit. Funny how it was morning in America once those roles were reversed.

Hillary is largely subject to the same bullshit Carter is, but at least in her case there are concrete negative consequences a few of her husband's compromises had that can be pointed to as evidence. Never mind that in all but a couple of those cases the consequences weren't as obvious as we like to think they were now and, more importantly, that Hillary is not Bill. Far too many people act like they are one and the same when they are decidedly not. They share some similarities in political outlook, but also have many differences.
posted by wierdo at 9:15 AM on June 7, 2016 [37 favorites]


once Clinton is elected we can get to work pushing her away from her natural inclinations towards centrism. Politics is work. Voting is the easy part.

Maybe we can show her with voting in 2017, 2018 how committed we are to progressive policy. I don't know that her centrism is "natural" or just what she feels is viable in the current climate. And no I don't think Sanders' candidacy upended all of that.
posted by zutalors! at 9:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Super delegates were created so that those people would not be required to run for delegate slots against their own constituents. While technically they can vote for whomever they like, in practice they vote for whomever has the majority of pledged delegates.

Super delegates do provide a safety valve for a couple of catastrophic scenarios, like the sudden death or indictment of the front runner, but can make the nomination process feel confusing.

Since super delegates are either elected officials or powerful party activists, they have very little incentive not to vote for the winner of the pledged delegate count. Possible reasons might include:

- Protest vote
- Pledged delegate count winner somehow has lost the popular vote
- Runner-up candidate is likely to run again, and super delegate wishes to build favor for the future

Where this causes friction is when a state's pledged delegates pick a losing candidate. Voters might feel that their super delegates should represent their state's choice, rather than the national one. The argument against that might be that super delegates can represent a move to unite behind the final nominee, or that the state's officials want to avoid retribution in the event that the nominee gets elected. A more cynical reading is that self-interested super delegates would always pick the winner in hopes of furthering their own careers.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 9:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


vverse23:
"I haven't seen this commentary from Glenn Greenwald posted yet, and I think it's relevant. Regardless of which candidate one does or doesn't prefer, yesterday's crowing announcement by the AP seemed, um, misguided at best."
It definitely fell into, "I'm not saying your wrong..." territory as far as timing goes.
posted by charred husk at 9:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


i'm leaving work early this evening and going to my polling place to cast my ballot for bernie and i'm excited about it. i think he has a shot at winning california, but i know the nomination is wildly unlikely at best. for me, as a millennial woman, the fact that someone even resembling a socialist candidate made it this far in the primary is amazing and gives me a bit of hope for the future.
posted by burgerrr at 9:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Even the current "liberal" status quo is literally killing us,

This general accusation of the entire status quo is surely the correct conclusion to draw from this news article about a surprise uptick in the death rate.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]




Even the current "liberal" status quo is literally killing us,

Tying the rise in the death rate to "liberal" [scare quotes yours] policies is somewhere between preposterously tenuous and deeply disingenuous.
posted by dersins at 9:19 AM on June 7, 2016 [37 favorites]


Just got back from voting. Great turnout at 9 AM: Two other people! Also, I got to "stick" it to the man by taking a sticker even though I already got one with my vote-by-mail ballot!
posted by clorox at 9:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Clinton is to the left of Obama on a ton of issues.

Yes she's not necessarily the most progressive candidate out there but she isn't promising bullshit she can't deliver.
posted by vuron at 9:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


Even though it doesn't matter, in several ways, because this is South Dakota, I voted for Hillary this morning in our primary. I will proudly vote for her again in November.

There is a small chance that Trump will become repugnant enough that South Dakota could go for Hillary. There's time enough, and opportunities abound.
posted by yesster at 9:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Total historical revisionism. As late as early October, Carter was leading in national opinion polls. It's amazing how much the Reaganites managed to rewrite the facts of Carter's presidency.

One historical fact that should always be kept in mind, though, is that so-called "evangelical" voters turned away from Carter, an born-again Christian whose life since holding office has included moving acts of service to the poor -- including helping to wipe out the parasitic guinea worm -- and voted for Reagan.

They'll vote for Trump, too, make no mistake about it.

Tying the rise in the death rate to "liberal" [scare quotes yours] policies is somewhere between preposterously tenuous and deeply disingenuous.

Without even having RTFA, it's bruisingly obvious that the several states have governors and legislators from both parties, roughly half of which can hardly be said to be "liberal."
posted by Gelatin at 9:33 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Forget parliamentary democracies, this election season is starting to make me envious of places like Turkmenistan.


I mean, yes, your votes are all automatically cast for Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, but at least there's transparency in the system.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:36 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


In previous races I think they've always given combined totals. But this year I only saw those combined totals after Iowa and New Hampshire. Bernie responded by pointing out (accurately) that those superdelegates didn't really vote until July and shouldn't be counted one way or the other yet, and news organizations mostly seemed to realize that he had a point, and reported superdelegates and pledged delegates separately after that point, at least the ones I watched/read.

So the funny thing is that it wasn't simply the Sanders campaign making this point, it was actually the (corrupt! evil! rigged! amirite?) DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz who repeatedly asked the media to stop reporting superdelegate counts, or at least not to combine them with pledged delegate counts precisely because that gave a misleading picture of the state of the race and could have potentially influenced voters.
posted by zachlipton at 9:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Forget parliamentary democracies, this election season is starting to make me envious of places like Turkmenistan.

Complexity does not equal opacity or corruption. The party primary system is messy and could be improved, but we've done a beautiful thing by nominating Clinton, and I don't think anyone living under repressive conditions would really appreciate the dry comparison.
posted by Think_Long at 9:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Mod note: Several deleted; see all the notes above re: same old same old.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:52 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Trump/Berdimuhamedow 2016!
posted by kirkaracha at 10:00 AM on June 7, 2016


at least there's transparency in the system.

Am I missing something? Has the Democratic party changed its longstanding nomination process without telling anyone? Is the selection process being kept a secret from voters?
posted by duffell at 10:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I started out supporting Hillary, because I didn't know about Bernie, and Hillary was "close enough."

Then I switched to supporting Bernie, because his politics align more closely to mine, and even though I didn't think he would win I thought he do a lot to shift the overton window.

Then I switched back to supporting Hillary, because the intensity of the attacks on her coming from Bernie supporters has been insane, and I don't for one second believe it has nothing to do with sexism. Especially when the attacks focus on her "arrogance." Even though I still preferred Bernie, I started defending her in public.

And as his campaign has dragged on I have (a) wished every day that it would be over so the Democrats could focus on stopping Trump instead of tearing each other apart, and (b) become more and more convinced of the importance of having a woman as president.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [55 favorites]


After reading the Brock Turner trial coverage, I have been thinking lately...imagine what it would (*knock on wood* WILL *knock on wood*) be like to have someone sitting in the Oval Office who knows what it feels like to be afraid walking alone at night, or to be hollered at from a passing car while walking down the street, or to be called "honey" in front of a client at work...
posted by sallybrown at 10:07 AM on June 7, 2016 [59 favorites]


OK, so Paul Ryan condemns Trump's remarks and right out of the playbook, Trump's spokesperson says Ryan is racist.

My question for Ryan--and everyone else who has endorsed Trump--is: are you withdrawing your endorsement? Because if you're not, you're endorsing Trump's racism.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:09 AM on June 7, 2016 [29 favorites]


This is the case in most of Canada.

CTRL+F "Nova Scotia".... hmmm, now why would you leave that out? Why is that the only province you left out? Could it be because, since 1993, we've had three Liberal governments, three Progressive Conservative governments, and an NDP government? That the last three elections have gone PC-NDP-Lib? That the seats have been split 145-122-106 during that time? Or 105-113-103 if you take out the big Lib win in 1993?

It's funny that the one province you happened to overlook is the one that completely blows your argument out of the water.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:09 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


sallybrown, I wish I could hug you for that comment. I'm a little teary right now just thinking about it.
posted by cooker girl at 10:09 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Even complaining that superdelegate positions might have unduly influenced voters is a weird thing to do.

Clinton won the support of superdelegates through her decades of effective work and overwhelming respect in the Democratic party, not by casting a hex on them. Superdelegates are people, and they're allowed to say who they support. It's not illegitimate for Clinton to have the support of people, nor for them to declare their support. It'd be like complaining that Al Gore had an unfair advantage in 2000 on account of being Vice President. Well, no shit, he earned the office of the VP, and that comes with a certain level of cachet.

If Sanders wanted a bunch of superdelegates in his column at the start of the race, he could have chosen to spend the last 20 years working as a key leader in the Democratic party instead of being a fun "independent" and only switching affiliation at the last minute so he could play in the big leagues. He didn't.

You can't have it both ways: A tabula rasa where Clinton's immense popularity and support in the Democratic party gains her literally zero advantage, to the point where high-profile people who support her aren't allowed to say that out loud, and a race where we can use her public statements from 20 years ago (when she was building that same support echoing what 95%+ of liberals were saying at the time) against her.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:11 AM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


Trump has apparently decided that there's damn well going to be a GOP crackup even if he has to do it himself, I guess.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:11 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


are you withdrawing your endorsement? Because if you're not, you're endorsing Trump's racism.

As I saw on Twitter: outright racism is preferable to a centrist Democrat.
posted by suelac at 10:12 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


The thing that makes me tear up a little is thinking about the big, heavy purse my mom lugged around my whole childhood, filled with all manner of things (checkbook, Cheerios, hairbrushes, a soda, loose Kleenex that fuzzed up the whole thing, a pair of flats, those little tiny sticks of sugarless gum, etc). I don't know if Hillary is as much of a pack mule as my mom in that respect, but there's going to be a purse kicking around the Oval Office soon.
posted by sallybrown at 10:14 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Question, and apologies if this had been covered already or if I'm way off in understanding things: Say Donald Trump decides for whatever reason he doesn't want to be the Republican nominee and drops out, what happens to his delegates? I assume they can't - money, logistics, time - go and have another round of primaries. Can he "transfer" them to pretty much anyone else? If he's selected a running mate, does his Veep get bumped up and inherit them? And so forth?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:14 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


You know who agrees with me on all the issues? Me.
I'm not getting elected so I have to compromise. That's the scourge of democracy and it's the reason democracy is better than having a dictator.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:14 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Even complaining that superdelegate positions might have unduly influenced voters is a weird thing to do.

I'd say there's a difference between the optics of winning the "endorsement primary" and actually counting superdelegate declarations as part of the delegate count without stating specifically that they're unpledged and capable of changing. If the story is "Clinton has 800 delegates to SAanders' 20 after first primary", people are going to think "Well, fuck, it's over then."
posted by Etrigan at 10:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Idiocracy was a documentary.

Idiocracy is one of the most appallingly-bad movies to come out in my lifetime, and I say that as a guy who both respects Mike Judge's talents and his aims as a writer. It is such a spectacular failure of a satire that I intend to use it to teach future students what satire looks like when it fails.

Its failure is one of form completely not anticipating its own function. Idiocracy is a satire about future generations who are so attention-deficit, so incapable of grasping complex ideas, that they reduce all their thoughts to meme-level thoughts. Idiocracy portrays this by presenting its central concept—that idiots breed more than smarts do—in a meme-length video with catchy, bright graphics, and then by depicting its idiots by having them spout all manner of meme-length and meme-catchy phrases. Its hero is completely uninteresting, its plot is an afterthought, and the film as a whole fails to present anything remotely resembling intellectual thought.

The irony of Idiocracy, then, is that as a movie it embodies precisely the principle it's declaring and critiquing. But it fails to use that irony; if Judge realized what he was bringing into the world, he sure as shit dropped the ball on doing anything with it. Idiocracy is difficult to use as an argument in favor of finding a better human nature; it's great at using to drop context-free scorn on any aspect of society you dislike, and acting like you've made some kind of profound statement about the world. It's an enabler.

Other, better satires exist; In The Loop is a devastating critique of American and British politics (and Veep, while less pointed, is still pretty darn good), Four Lions will leave you with a pit in your stomach, and Ben Wheatley's High-Rise, out this year, is a critique of modern society that literally nauseated me. Those satires offer scene after scene, line after line, sequence after sequence, that could be used to critique politics, groupthink, society, human nature. But to insert them into a political discussion, you'd have to understand things like, oh, context, and how an idea maps onto some aspect of political territory. And doing that is... well, it's not hard. Let's be honest with ourselves. Doing that requires the sort of low-level asinine mental connections that we learn how to do at the age of three or so. But that's harder than quoting fucking Idiocracy, which requires you to memorize two or three phrases, some of which are equally valid for spouting "ironic" homophobia, and spit them out at random intervals, like a shit spigot watering a turd garden.

The goal of a conversation should be elevation: listening to people who disagree with you, coming to understand why they disagree with you, and trying your damnedest to articulate your thoughts and beliefs within the contexts of other participants' stated outlooks. With a couple of exceptions—such as "people are demanding an insane amount of emotional labor from, I dunno, women, to pick a random group of people, and those women are sick of saying the same goddamn thing over and over again to the same goddamn people"—this is how basically any conversation, whether it's about the Beyonce concert last night or the intricacies and ambiguities of the modern Leftist landscape, ought to operate. It's not even a matter of intellect—it's a matter of fucking listening to what people have to goddamn say and saying something back, the word back implying addressed to somebody else, who is here, who is speaking literally right now.

And, in that context, it's clear why memes of the Idiocracy variety are problematic. Memes reduce subjects to their lowest common denominators. They provide paths that lead away from complexity, away from ambiguity, away from hesitation or uncertainty or doubt. They steamroll over garden paths and replace them with a derivative landscape of asphalt that stinks in the heat. It has nothing to do with intelligence, which is why Idiocracy was flawed from the premise alone, and everything to do with context, empathy, and the capacity to include somebody else in your thoughts and words. (Could Idiocracy have provided us with a genuinely compelling plot about a smart person confronting idiots? I sort of think the film would've fallen apart at the seams had it tried. When you hear the writer of Four Lions talking about turning terrorists into slapstick, it's clear he spent a long time evolving his viewpoint on terrorists before writing that film; did Mike Judge have a similar evolutionary process?)

I love pop culture. I love quotable shit. I love black comedy and scorn. I see reasons to both love and despise Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. I don't think either one is perfect. I voted idealistically in this election, but I voted knowing that the guy I voted for was going to lose, and may have changed by vote if I thought he had a chance. My conscience was eased by knowing I didn't have to look into my candidate more thoroughly because of that. I am genuinely interested in understanding what people think of this election, which is historic on about two dozen axes all at once, and which could lead our nation in so many wildly different directions that it fills me with awe, fascination, and terror all at once. I get the sense that a lot of people in these threads are magnetized by this election for similar reasons.

It is beyond frustrating that there are people in this discussion, and they exist all along the political spectrum, who are trying to turn it into a game of one-upsmanship—and I think that certain of their vantage points, their declared intentions w/r/t the primary and the general, are themselves forms of that one-upmanship, attempts to declare themselves inviolably right and the people who disagree with them inviolably wrong. I myself hold opinions here which could probably be interpreted that way, and do my best to avoid saying them the way that'd feel the viscerally satisfying to me, because I don't want to lead threads down that path myself. These trends are nothing new, but as time goes on and I get older and try harder to be less of a shit towards the people in my life, digital or otherwise, they frustrate me more and more, especially because most of the time we talk around them, instead of calling them for what they are and trying to have a conversation that's worth happening.

I believe my political stances are rooted in compassion and caring and genuinely wanting to make my country/the planet better and more humane, and that people who disagree with me in certain ways are buying into ideas that will (in my opinion) make the world decidedly uglier and meaner and worse. I also think that most people hold the beliefs that they do because they want something similar—I mean, why else give a shit about a political stance in the first place? So it frustrates me that people who ostensibly see the world the way I do let themselves turn ugly and mean, almost-but-not-quite as much as it genuinely delights me when I find people whose beliefs I hold to be wretched or vile, but are open to discussing, talking, and listening. Even when I leave those discussions wishing that I was more persuasive than I was. Again, sometimes you get frustrated and go "Fuck this shit!" and just literally can't deal with that kind of thing, but I also don't think that most of the people I've met that like to argue in bad faith have ever really hit that point. It's usually pretty apparent when they have. More often it's a combination of immaturity, pettiness, and arrogance—the kind of arrogance that involves thinking you know more than anybody else, that your experiences are more valid, that your thought processes are more logical and fly truer, and thus renders you far less likely to have thought things through than any of the people whose ambiguities you view as a sign of weakness. The blood in the water that you'll use to feast upon their spurious claims, to declare victory, to leave no man or woman standing—and whether or not it's because you're right or merely more exhausting doesn't ultimately matter, not in conversations such as this.

Anyway, that's why I'm not the biggest fan of Idiocracy as a work of satire.
posted by rorgy at 10:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [68 favorites]


It's funny that the one province you happened to overlook is the one that completely blows your argument out of the water.

The one province I didn't mention is the one where all three parties are vaguely indistinguishable from one another. The Nova Scotia NDP, Liberals and Tories are all the same bland centrist mealymouthed pile of blah and have been for fifteen years, which is almost exactly as long as NS has had three parties capable of contending for the leadership.

And even that's righting itself, as the Tories have been steadily diminishing in the popular vote for a decade now, and the familiar two-party split re-establishes itself with the Liberals and NDP bashing each other about the middle, because first past the post optimizes itself for two parties, and if three parties are all going to be bland centrist mealymouthed blah, it makes far more sense for there to be only two parties rather than three because the remaining two parties have a better chance of winning. This isn't even a political question: it's a mathematical one.

Also if you're arguing that Nova Scotia, the fourth-smallest province in the dominion, is proof of your theory when literally every other provincial government in Canada argues against it, well, I don't know what to say.
posted by mightygodking at 10:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anyway, that's why I'm not the biggest fan of Idiocracy as a work of satire.

yeah but it was still a documentary tho
posted by tonycpsu at 10:18 AM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Say Donald Trump decides for whatever reason he doesn't want to be the Republican nominee and drops out, what happens to his delegates? (


It depends on whether he releases his delegates or not - but the VP is not actually chosen yet, and so can't move up until it's after the convention and he is selected.
posted by corb at 10:19 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean, all they really need to do is take actual things Trump says and sub in Camacho's face and name.

That wouldn't fly - to quote Cohen, "Comacho's not a racist"
posted by Itaxpica at 10:20 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hey, so, possibly dumb question from a New Jersey voter -- I didn't have time to vote this morning before work but plan on going tonight on my way home. However, I didn't receive any sample ballot in the mail like I usually get before elections. I did some googling and it seems that the voting location for my town hadn't changed, but, is this a sign that I might have been dropped from the rolls somehow? Is there anything special I should say/bring in case of problems? Or is it moot now?
posted by oh yeah! at 10:20 AM on June 7, 2016


OK, so Paul Ryan condemns Trump's remarks and right out of the playbook, Trump's spokesperson says Ryan is racist.

Oh god it gets worse:
"Speaker Ryan is wrong and Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is supporting identity politics, which is racist," Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord, a member of the Reagan administration, said on CNN Tuesday when asked about Ryan's concerns.

"I am accusing anybody, anybody who believes in identity politics, which he apparently now does, of playing the race card," Lord said. "The Republican establishment is playing this. Senator McConnell is playing this. These people have run and hid and borrowed the Democratic agenda of playing the race card. It is wrong."
So first we're saying that identity politics, the force that brought us, among other greatest hits, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, racist. But beyond that, the Trump campaign, which Lord represents, is one massive appeal to identity politics. Every other word out of Trump's mouth is an appeal to boost white male voters and put down people of any other group. Therefore I think Lord just concluded that Trump is racist too.
posted by zachlipton at 10:20 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


oh yeah!, check here.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:22 AM on June 7, 2016


MetaFilter: Oh god it gets worse.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [31 favorites]


Hey, so, possibly dumb question from a New Jersey voter -- I didn't have time to vote this morning before work but plan on going tonight on my way home. However, I didn't receive any sample ballot in the mail like I usually get before elections. I did some googling and it seems that the voting location for my town hadn't changed, but, is this a sign that I might have been dropped from the rolls somehow? Is there anything special I should say/bring in case of problems? Or is it moot now?

Check to see if you're registered here. Bring photo id. If someone challenges you, you can sign an affadavit.
posted by zarq at 10:23 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


My question for Ryan--and everyone else who has endorsed Trump--is: are you withdrawing your endorsement? Because if you're not, you're endorsing Trump's racism.

Don't worry, Paul "Portrait of Courage™" Ryan wants to let you know that he doesn't actually think Trump's racist himself, just that one thing he said. And that's totes cool, right?
posted by zombieflanders at 10:26 AM on June 7, 2016


PolitiFact's files on Hillary Clinton (71% Half True, Mostly True, or True) and Donald Trump (76% Half False, False, or Pants on Fire).
posted by kirkaracha at 10:27 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


zombieflanders:
"Don't worry, Paul "Portrait of Courage™" Ryan wants to let you know that he doesn't actually think Trump's racist himself, just that one thing he said. And that's totes cool, right?"
Hey, he's been watching Jay Smooth videos!
posted by charred husk at 10:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


To understand Paul Ryan's position, remember two key facts about why Donald Trump is awesome, according to his supporters:
1. He speaks his mind. No filter at all. The man tells it like it is. You can believe him because he's so real.
2. He doesn't really believe the crazy shit he says. It's just a show; he's actually quite reasonable.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


Thanks, zarq & roomthreeseventeen, it's showing me as registered in my town since 2001. (I'm still weirded out by never getting that usual mailing - not even any last-minute campaign robo-dials, but I guess the campaigns are focusing their money & time on more contested districts)
posted by oh yeah! at 10:33 AM on June 7, 2016


Donald Trump Hired a New Political Director and Forgot to Tell His Campaign
Donald Trump this week hired a new national political director and forgot to tell his campaign, so things are going great over there—thanks for asking.

His new hire, former lobbyist Jim Murphy, is certainly a boldface name on the list of people who could give a shit about your ethical quandaries. According to the Daily Beast, Murphy’s greatest hits include representing—more than one!—military juntas (including Myanmar and Azerbaijan), lobbying on behalf of big tobacco, and orchestrating a climate change denial campaign paid for by Exxon. Which is all to say, he’s a perfect fit for the Trump campaign. Or maybe not.

“Never heard of him,” Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks—who I’m fairly confident is not Donald Trump in a wig doing falsetto, though it wouldn’t exactly be out of character—told the New York Times in an email Sunday after the hire was announced.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:34 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


"I am accusing anybody, anybody who believes in identity politics, which he apparently now does, of playing the race card," Lord said.

A bit of translation here: "playing the race card" == "criticizing overt racism".
posted by Gelatin at 10:35 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Ryan wants to let you know that he doesn't actually think Trump's racist himself, just that one thing he said. And that's totes cool, right?

Well, that was completely incoherent.
posted by zarq at 10:35 AM on June 7, 2016


...imagine what it would (*knock on wood* WILL *knock on wood*) be like to have someone sitting in the Oval Office who knows what it feels like to be afraid walking alone at night, or to be hollered at from a passing car while walking down the street, or to be called "honey" in front of a client at work...
posted by sallybrown at 1:07 PM on June 7


I can't help but believe that a lot of women in the UK felt the same way as things were leading up to the 1979 General Election.
posted by magstheaxe at 10:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Thanks, zarq & roomthreeseventeen, it's showing me as registered in my town since 2001. (I'm still weirded out by never getting that usual mailing - not even any last-minute campaign robo-dials, but I guess the campaigns are focusing their money & time on more contested districts)

No problem.

I'm in NY and didn't receive anything from the state regarding our status or our polling location. Not even a sample ballot. I assumed the DNC didn't bother?
posted by zarq at 10:37 AM on June 7, 2016


It's a good thing for Trump that white man isn't an "identity".
posted by tonycpsu at 10:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]




Trumpster lies like fucking crazy and his base cheers him on. A not insignificant percentage of pundits believe that perceptions trump reality so it really doesn't matter how big of lies he is telling if some percent of the population believes and is willing to repost it on social media.

Wasting lies on half truths is pointless now you might as well go for crazy as fuck lies like Hillary eats aborted fetuses for energy or that the Clintons have a crack team of ninjas that kill off opponents.

The distressing thing is that I used to think of the left as relying on facts to back up arguments but now they are increasingly promoting an agenda of woo and easily debunked lies to a gullible audience.

I am hopeful of a Clinton victory but man I have some doubts about some elements of the base. Especially when the left pulls out attacks on Clinton that seem cribbed from Breitbart or could easily be seen in old school antisemitic propaganda.
posted by vuron at 10:39 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


From the "Trump and the End of Everything" link.

A Trump presidency would not make America great again; it would make America ordinary, for the first time.


Collective eye-rolling from people in other countries.

Also, the author seems to have forgotten about the existence of Andrew Jackson.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


It's a good thing for Trump that white man isn't an "identity".

Exactly. Because with Trump's spokeswoman's comment today that Trump's sister could be biased as a female judge, it is clear that the only unbiased, acceptable identity is straight white man.
posted by zachlipton at 10:43 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]




I can't believe I'm now in the position of rooting for the increasingly unlikely prospect of Trump's campaign keeping its shit together for just a few more weeks, but I am. If we have to be subjected to this absolute garbage fire of a Republican nomination process, the least the Trump campaign could do is pull the entire party down into the trash flames along with it. Maybe something halfway decent can arise from the ashes. *hollow laughter* j/k our republic is saddled with this horror show of a major political party for the rest of eternity I guess

But seriously, what the fuck is going on over there at Trump HQ? How long before one or more of Trump's high up campaign staff just totally snaps? Because that...that doesn't look like a good work environment.
posted by yasaman at 10:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]




Reporters being threatened. Civility seems lost. I am so discouraged.

Amy Chozick ‏@amychozick 38m38 minutes ago
I won't be answering calls from unknown numbers today, after third call from Bernie supporters telling me they'd hunt me down in the streets

posted by Sophie1 at 10:47 AM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


Trump and the End of Everything
"Even if he is not elected, Trump has wrought real damage. The world is a more dangerous place when the United States can no longer be counted on to act as the adult in the room, and Trump’s wild statements about defaulting on our debt and the proliferation (and use) of nuclear weapons may come to nothing (fingers crossed here), but other countries now have to assess their interests, security concerns, and foreign policies to account for the real possibility that U.S. power will be placed in the hands of a spoiled, petulant, impulsive man-child."
If the world is only just now realizing that one of the two major parties in this country are self-destructive then they haven't been paying close attention. Since the 90's, Republicans have given us ignorance, extensive fearmongering, government shutdowns, a war on science, a war on sexuality, a war on intellect, a war on women, a multi-pronged war on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, a war on Muslims, a war on African Americans and Latinos, fundamentalism substituting for sanity, obstructionism in place of governance, a dangerously stupid debt ceiling crisis, a war started for non-existent weapons of mass destruction.... and on and on and on...

But sure, let's blame Trump and pretend they didn't do everything in their power to create an end goal where his candidacy and Presidency are the grand prize.
posted by zarq at 10:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [34 favorites]


I voted for Bernie in my state's primary, but his grouchy unwillingness to concede the nomination despite the fact that Clinton has three million more votes, is winning handily from every angle, and has been the obviously-inevitable winner for months now is really starting to sour me on him. He needs to get behind Clinton or at least get out of the fucking way so that the Democratic party can consolidate and focus its energies on defeating Trump.

Bernie and his die-hard supporters represent a significant bloc of the Democratic electorate, and he needs to free them up because this election is fucking scary and a Trump president would be a catastrophe. I appreciate his economic ideals and would gladly have backed him for president, but his time is over and he's putting the whole country in jeopardy by actively hindering the process of consolidation.

We had a historically fragmented Republican party that we could have been ripping to shreds over the last month or so, but now they seem to have made their peace at least temporarily and are largely behind Trump at this point because they were given a month's head start. Bernie, you're fucking it up at this point. Get out of the way before you make things any worse!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:50 AM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


Yup, a lot of female political journalists are reporting threats and harassment. What is wrong with people?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


If the world is only just now realizing that one of the two major parties in this country are self-destructive then they haven't been paying close attention. Since the 90's, Republicans have given us ignorance, extensive fearmongering, government shutdowns, a war on science, a war on sexuality, a war on intellect, a war on women, a multi-pronged war on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, a war on Muslims, a war on African Americans and Latinos, fundamentalism substituting for sanity, obstructionism in place of governance, a dangerously stupid debt ceiling crisis, a war started for non-existent weapons of mass destruction.... and on and on and on...

In that vein, here's Charles Pierce: These Republicans Are Outraged By Trump. Also, They're Voting for Him.
"I'm just not going to talk about Donald Trump," Cornyn said during his first gaggle with Hill reporters. "I'm not going to comment about everything he says and doesn't say. We'd never get anything done around here. … If it's the only thing you guys ask about, yes, it does affect our ability to talk policy." The second time he was asked about Trump, Cornyn said: "You guys may not be able to stop talking about Donald Trump. But I can." Finally, in his third discussion with the media, reporters asked him about Internet privacy and Zika funding—a discussion Cornyn seemed to find refreshing in a Trump-obsessed Washington.
It is here where we point out that Republicans have been holding up Zika funding in the Congress because the Republicans in the House of Representatives are completely insane, and beyond anyone's control, and perfectly representative of the forces that produced the presidential nominee who makes Burr and Cornyn and the rest of them so uncomfortable.

For their part, of course, these same jamokes in the upper chamber are keeping the Supreme Court playing shorthanded because they don't like the twice-elected president of the United States and are content to hold one seat on the bench open to be filled by the guy about whom they'd rather not talk.

Incoherence as a strategy does not seem like a plan.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


What is wrong with people?

Rampant abhorrent sexism that is always egregiously downplayed? That's my guess.
posted by zutalors! at 10:54 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


I can't help but believe that a lot of women in the UK felt the same way as things were leading up to the 1979 General Election.

Because "has a vagina" = "has a vagina," am i rite fellas?! Really, it's preposterous to view Clinton as some sort of Thatcherite, unless you're unable to see beyond their reproductive organs.
posted by sallybrown at 10:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [47 favorites]


Trump on American Exceptionalism: "I don't think it's a very nice term. We're exceptional; you're not...I don't want to say, 'We're exceptional. We’re more exceptional.' Because essentially we're saying we're more outstanding than you."
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 AM on June 7, 2016


And Judge Sotomayor might actually show empathy. Empathy!
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:59 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Fun fact: The house Republicans' "Zika bill" would provide no funding for disease fighting at all, but WOULD stop the EPA from regulating pesticides that get sprayed into lakes, rivers, wetlands, etc. Priorities!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:01 AM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]



I can't help but believe that a lot of women in the UK felt the same way as things were leading up to the 1979 General Election.


This comparison would make a lot more sense if, say, Carly Fiorina were the current candidate...
posted by bardophile at 11:02 AM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


FAIR is not happy with the AP's decision.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:03 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't help but believe that a lot of women in the UK felt the same way as things were leading up to the 1979 General Election.

... what's the point of this statement?

Clinton and Thatcher aren't equivalent political choices; Clinton is more similar to Sanders. And the fact that Thatcher had terrible politics doesn't take away from the fact that we need more women in power.

TBH, I find your statement condescending -- it's as if you believe caring about having women in power means we don't care about an individual woman's politics, and are blind to the consequences of voting for someone we don't agree with.

And I'd also suggest that assuming large numbers of women voted for Thatcher solely because she's a woman would be sexist as well, because women have political opinions that are not invalidated or irrelevant if we care about representation. Sadly, a hell of a lot of people believed in Thatcher's politics--men and women. Thatcher did not win because women voted her in just because they wanted to see a woman in the position.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:05 AM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


Can someone please point me to a good writeup of the Clinton email situation (and a coherent explanation of how unlikely an indictment is) for the Bernie-or-Busters on my Facebook feed?
posted by stolyarova at 11:05 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


So Trump says something racist, Paul Ryan tells him to stop saying racist things and Trump responds by calling Ryan a racist?! I don't know whether to laugh, clutch my pearls, or grab the bourbon. This is the most enthralling shit-show I've ever watched.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


I can't help but believe that a lot of women in the UK felt the same way as things were leading up to the 1979 General Election.

I don't think Clinton is remotely like Thatcher, but I do find it depressing that the UK hasn't had a woman prime minister since her.

In fact, if you look at the list of countries who have elected women to their highest government position, many have elected only one.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 11:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


This comparison would make a lot more sense if, say, Carly Fiorina were the current candidate...

Even then, it's ridiculous to compare across countries like this. It's essentially saying "oh my we let a girl in charge of something before and look how that turned out!" Not only does it blame gender, it lets her disgusting political views off the hook completely. A male Thatcher would have harmed England in just the same way the female one did.

(Just one of the many ways sexism harms us, it obviously runs roughshod over logic and reasoning abilities)
posted by sallybrown at 11:06 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


A number that doesn't take into account any of the states that decided by caucus, which Sanders won, and therefore is not particularly useful

Given that two caucus states (NE, WA) also had primary votes that had higher turnout and saw Sanders lose, I don't think your argument holds the water you think it does.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:07 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


...despite the fact that Clinton has three million more votes...

A number that doesn't take into account any of the states that decided by caucus, which Sanders won, and therefore is not particularly useful.


As 538 pointed out, the total voters in the caucuses is about 1.1 million. Even if Sanders had won 100% of those voters, he would still be a couple million behind. This line about caucuses being unfair to Sanders has been thoroughly debunked.
posted by JackFlash at 11:10 AM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


Can someone please point me to a good writeup of the Clinton email situation

Why Hillary Clinton is unlikely to be indicted over her private email server

Past cases suggest Hillary won’t be indicted
posted by chris24 at 11:13 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


i think we could let people be excited about a female nominee without going BUT THATCHER at them? I mean really, it didn't need that kind of a "response."
posted by zutalors! at 11:14 AM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


Mod note: A few deleted. Let's call the Thatcher thing and the caucus-vs-primary thing done; we can actually discuss things without having repetitive "your candidate is terrible" fights.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:15 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Once President Trump has ratfucked the country, dismantled the EPA, repealed abortion and marriage rights, curbed voting rights, and screwed over minorities and the working poor, THAT'S when the American people will finally rise up and usher in the gleaming liberal utopia that there is literally no historical precedent for in human history!
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:16 AM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


And regarding the recent State Department report...

State Department Report On Email Vindicates Clinton Rather Than Nails Her
posted by chris24 at 11:17 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Anyway, that's why I'm not the biggest fan of Idiocracy as a work of satire.

I get that, but we're in a post-South Park and post-Daily Show kinda world now to have standards in satire, sadly. Statires.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:17 AM on June 7, 2016


Thank you, chris24.
posted by stolyarova at 11:19 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


FAIR is not happy with the AP's decision.

I mean, nobody complained when everyone announced that Trump was the presumptive nominee (ok, we complained a lot, but about the result, not about the announcement). Is the only problem here the timing? Would it have been ok if the AP announced this a week ago instead of the night before today's primaries? Because Sanders was just as unlikely to be the nominee last week as he was this morning.
posted by zachlipton at 11:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


There is no “Trump Bump” in the polls — just a growing lead for the Democrats - "For these reasons, it is good not to put too much stock in these head-to-head polls. This is why we’ve done something different in our polling.

We have been fielding just one question since the start of the year: Who are you most likely to vote for in the upcoming presidential election? Respondents choose among these answers: definitely Republican candidate, likely Republican candidate, likely Democratic candidate, definitely Democratic candidate, or not voting. This question focuses on the party, rather than the individual candidate, because we believe the question will more accurately reflect voting in November than does polling in the spring. "
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:22 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Senor Cardgage:
"Once President Trump has ratfucked the country, dismantled the EPA, repealed abortion and marriage rights, curbed voting rights, and screwed over minorities and the working poor, THAT'S when the American people will finally rise up and usher in the gleaming liberal utopia that there is literally no historical precedent for in human history!"
Sadly that's probably not too far off - too often humanity has to get down in the shit before we begin to really shovel it. Too bad we'll taking generations to get back to where we were instead of moving forward.
posted by charred husk at 11:22 AM on June 7, 2016


Why Donald Trump won't stop talking about Judge Curiel - "Trump is ranting about Curiel's bias not because doing so is part of any kind of rational political strategy, but because he is going to lose the case. And if he loses, it must be somebody else's fault."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:24 AM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]




It's also an attempt to get Judge Curiel to second-guess any rulings that go against Trump. When your integrity is questioned like that (even by Trump) it makes you a little more cautious.
posted by sallybrown at 11:26 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean, nobody complained when everyone announced that Trump was the presumptive nominee

That happened because every other viable candidate had dropped out. It was a little bit before Trump had actually reached the delegate threshold.
posted by Etrigan at 11:29 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


U.S. Senate Republican leader McConnell says it's time for Trump to stop attacking various minority groups

So McConnell was ok with it before, but now it's time to stop? There's an actual time in the election season calendar when it becomes not ok to attack minority groups? What a joke.
posted by zachlipton at 11:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Trump is attacking Curiel because he will lose the Trump U case bad and he probably wants conservatives to pay his legal fees because they feel like he got screwed by a biased judge.

Hopefully the civil findings of fact can result in a criminal case but in the meantime I will just be happy if the civil penalties result in yet another bankruptcy
posted by vuron at 11:34 AM on June 7, 2016


Ok but to be fair, Trump is attacking a powerful American man now, and that kind of thing is just not permitted.

(Seriously every time someone is like "this fine Judge is FROM INDIANA how dare Trump" I just...can't)
posted by sallybrown at 11:35 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Actually I kinda hope Trump keeps up the attacks on women and minority groups. The last thing we need is for him to morph into a more thoughtful, presidential persona—which I totally believe he could do, because the man is a talented sociopath who will act however he thinks he needs to act to get what he wants. The GOP establishment is already pressuring him to do this, and he very well might.

The media would gobble that shit up like the parasiic power-fellating sycophants that they are, and the public's collective memory is similar to that of a three-day-old kitten, so he could easily scoop up the mainstream GOP electorate while hanging onto his extremely loyal base of openly proto-fascist bigots. Then he would be a truly dangerous opponent for Clinton, who is not a very strong candidate in absolute terms, and who is only looking like the favorite because Trump's numbers are so terrible.

This is the scenario that keeps me up at night right now.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:35 AM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Apparently the time to stop attacking minorities is when it looks like you are going to lose your job as Senate majority leader if not your job as Senator for the turtle nation.
posted by vuron at 11:36 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Actually I kinda hope Trump keeps up the attacks on women and minority groups.

The problem with that, of course, is that people are going to get hurt or killed before the election if he continues to do so.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


I was listening to Dan Savage this morning, and in his political intro he voiced concern that Trump is pulling a "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" move with Judge Curiel.
I have to say I hadn't considered that possibility. I guess somehow I remain an optimist despite this election's attempts to break me.

Is he the only one worried about this, or have I missed some insightful commentary or reporting? Can I stay in my mostly-sunny little corner?
posted by Superplin at 11:39 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Remember the 3500 other civil cases against Trump. He hasn't gotten around to attacking all those judges yet but this one had an easy excuse in Trump's tiny mind. And as I said, a major motivation for running for President for him is getting the power to make all these legal problems go away (which probably wouldn't work, but he DOES have a tiny mind).
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:41 AM on June 7, 2016


The problem with that, of course, is that people are going to get hurt or killed before the election if he continues to do so.

Yeah, regardless of whether it's politically useful to defeat him, I wish he'd stop. I don't think he will, because his base loves it, but that needs to be entirely on him.

Besides, as Clinton showed in her awesome foreign policy speech, the Democrats don't need to exploit against Trump's racism and sexism to defeat him. She can just point out what a braying jackass he is, and when Trump denies it -- notwithstanding that doing so implicitly accepts her criticism -- she can just release another carefully prepared documentation video.

Clinton can Batman Gambit her way to the White House.
posted by Gelatin at 11:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Superplin:
"I was listening to Dan Savage this morning, and in his political intro he voiced concern that Trump is pulling a "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" move."
That may be, but getting rid of him doesn't have to mean assassination if that's what you're worried about. At least not killing assassination, just character assassination. I'm sure people will begin trying to dig up the slightest bullshit thing that might make the judge look biased.

Still shitty, shitty, shitty.
posted by charred husk at 11:42 AM on June 7, 2016


I still think I'd prefer an obvious tyrant who can be easily defeated over a secret tyrant who might actually win. The version of Trump we've been seeing in the primaries is clearly the real Trump—his entire life history, much of which is public record, bears this out. At best we would be electing the presidential equivalent of an abusive partner. We need to keep this shit out in the open so that people can't support him while also pretending that they don't support fascism and bigotry, and so that the necessity of resisting him every inch of the way remains clear even to people who aren't really paying attention. If protests and riots are what it takes, I sincerely believe that would still be better than President Trump.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:42 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


And HEEEEEEERE's an early frontrunner for "how to tie your moderate GOP Senate candidate to Trump." Kirk makes it easy because he's always saying stupid-ass things in front of reporters, but if we're coming out of the gate with campaign material this ugly, imagine how GOP Congresscritters will be roasted over the fires of Trump as we get closer to November!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:43 AM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I wonder if things before November will ever get so bad that McConnell will decide it's time to have a SC nomination hearing.
posted by rewil at 11:44 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]





Actually I kinda hope Trump keeps up the attacks on women and minority groups.


are you a woman or a minority or possibly even both?
posted by zutalors! at 11:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


A senior member of the Iowa state senate has left the Republican party over Trump's racism. I think that's a matter of principle, rather than expedience, but interesting anyway.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:45 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is the scenario that keeps me up at night right now.

You know this reads like really privileged white male peacocking, right? "I hope Trump persists in his vicious rhetorical attacks against women and minorities (even though they may result in real, physical attacks on those same people) so that the tiny little minds of other lesser Americans are not swayed by his lies of moderation"?

To be clear I don't mean to escalate in the same rhetorical vein. It's just that corb called people out for similar statements in the previous thread, and she had a good point. I hope we as a nation can find a way to reduce Trump's immediate, ongoing harms and also still defeat him in the general election.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 11:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


McConnell is probably not going to get a more centrist nominee than Garland under Clinton and if they lose the senate they might get a more liberal jurist.

My guess is that they do a quick confirmation in November and December to avoid having to deal with this next year.
posted by vuron at 11:48 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


And remember, maybe the BIGGEST MOST BLATANT LIE Trump makes in his campaign is "I am a Winner; I always Win". FOUR BANKRUPTCIES, LOSER.

And I become mildly more optimistic that his followers aren't going to turn to violence, as he will either be forced out (and remember how important his choice of running mate is) between the convention and the election, or lose so badly that his followers will just fall into depression.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


vuron, I almost hope you're wrong and they keep stonewalling, or Garland withdraws once Clinton wins. Just as a way for her to nominate someone of her own choosing right off the bat.
posted by sotonohito at 11:50 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I wonder if things before November will ever get so bad that McConnell will decide it's time to have a SC nomination hearing.

If he did, it'd be a sure sign he's throwing in the towel, but the Republican base would howl for blood about Republicans "allowing another liberal justice on the Supreme Court" (which would mean the deathknell for any number of cherished conservative principles). Especially since the so-called "liberal media" has basically allowed McConnell to get away with nigh-unprecedented obstructionism so far.

What I wonder is whether, having gotten away with it so far, McConnell (assuming the Republicans manage to hang onto the Senate) doesn't just double down and refuse to consider any Clinton nominee either.

I doubt it'll come to that, though; if Clinton wins over Trump, I'd expect the Democrats to take the Senate as well. In that case McConnell may make noises about "the American people having spoken" and allow Garland to be confirmed in the lame duck session, on the ground that he'd be better than a younger, more liberal Clinton appointee.

Still, given the take-no-prisoners attitude of the Tea Party crowd, and the fact that their corporate backers would stand to lose considerably under a more liberal SCOTUS, it might not yet be enough to save McConnell's next re-election bid.
posted by Gelatin at 11:50 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I mean, nobody complained when everyone announced that Trump was the presumptive nominee

The key problem with the AP declaration was its reliance on anonymity. It's fine if the AP wants to call up all the undeclared superdelegates and can get them on the record, but an anonymous endorsement is pure garbage. There is nothing to hold those superdelegates to their word. The count is untrustworthy.

This is just as bad as "unnamed government official says" in news articles. This allows sources to lie with impunity.
posted by JackFlash at 11:52 AM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


vuron, I almost hope you're wrong and they keep stonewalling, or Garland withdraws once Clinton wins. Just as a way for her to nominate someone of her own choosing right off the bat.

Garland seems to have accepted his role as sacrificial lamb, and it'd be a lot to ask, but I'd hope he'd step aside in favor of another Obama pick. It isn't right at all that a partisan Senate denied Obama his Constitutional right to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

I have no doubt Clinton would get her own opportunities to make appointments to the Court.
posted by Gelatin at 11:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Remember the 3500 other civil cases against Trump. He hasn't gotten around to attacking all those judges yet but this one had an easy excuse in Trump's tiny mind.

I think it's also his thin skin and bruised ego. Remember, Romney's attack was what made it an issue.
posted by peeedro at 11:56 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Republican base would howl for blood about Republicans "allowing another liberal justice on the Supreme Court

Would they? I haven't seen any evidence that the base itself cares very much about this nomination. It seems localized to the Congress Republicans.
posted by zutalors! at 11:57 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wonder if things before November will ever get so bad that McConnell will decide it's time to have a SC nomination hearing.

No. That's the main reason Republican "leaders" feel compelled to stick with Trump to the end. They've enjoyed the benefit of the 5-4 Republican Supreme Court for 35 years, they know the value of always have the trump card, so to speak. They also know that they're not likely to fully enact their 1% and anti-citizen regressive agenda without having the Court. It's not an understatement to say the primary goal of the Republican movement since Reagan has been to control the Court entirely. They have worked tirelessly to get that last piece that would let them go full freak flag and overturn every Democratic law passed since FDR, but have been thwarted time and again by Souter and Kennedy not quite being Clarence Thomas, Bush getting to replace only reliable Republican Justices, and then Obama's two elections.

The one thing they can never, never, ever, ever do is let their sworn enemies the Democrats have a fifth vote of their own. They could live with Obama's first two appointments as maintaining the status quo, but they'll never confirm another Obama appointment, and unless the Democrats also regain the Senate, I don't think they will confirm a Hilary pick either. At that point it will have been 9+ months, they'll have an argument that 8 SCOTUS Justices is working just fine, maybe we should make it a permanent state.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Clinton is free to nominate Zombie Scalia otherwise she is going to be protested as trying to pack the bench with liberals.

In fact if another judge dies or retires I halfway expect Republicans to suggest shrinking the court to 7 justices.
posted by vuron at 11:58 AM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's been said before but please Hillary nominate Obama for Scalia's seat. Some conservative heads would literally explode.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Obama doesn't want to be a justice.
posted by zutalors! at 12:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I haven't seen any evidence that the base itself cares very much about this nomination.

It depends on what you mean by "base." As T.D. Strange noted above, which way the SCOTUS goes matters very much to the Republican agenda, and to the wealthiest 1% on whose behalf Republicans work. A Court that's more liberal by one justice can overturn Citizens United, restore the Voting Rights act, uphold the EPA's jurisdiction over carbon emissions and any number of other decisions that means serious money to numerous corporate and wealthy interests -- not to mention safeguarding abortion, LGBT rights, and access to contraceptives.

One of the reasons the Republican Party has been working ever more obviously for the wealthy and corporations is that they back conservative primary challenges when their pet congresscritters step out of line. If McConnell doesn't deliver, the Republican Party's financial backers can at least replace him with a more fanatical ideologue.
posted by Gelatin at 12:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


In fact if another judge dies or retires I halfway expect Republicans to suggest shrinking the court to 7 justices.

This will not happen if Thomas has a coronary next or Kennedy retires. If anything Republicans are going to argue for an age limit of 85 on SCOTUS justices.
posted by Talez at 12:09 PM on June 7, 2016


Obama doesn't want to be a justice.

Cite please? I agree that he'd be awesome as one, and he was after all a professor of Constitutional law.
posted by Gelatin at 12:10 PM on June 7, 2016


It's been said before but please Hillary nominate Obama for Scalia's seat. Some conservative heads would literally explode.

Obama did say he was planning to stay in DC after his presidency. I mean, the stated reason was so that his kinds could finish high school, but, well....
posted by dersins at 12:10 PM on June 7, 2016


Obama doesn't want to be a justice.

Also, wouldn't he have to recuse himself from a fair number of cases?
posted by bardophile at 12:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]




Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person [Republicans will] run in 2020, given the trend.
Ramsey Bolton, obviously.
posted by msalt at 12:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Senator Corker, mentioned a lot as a VP possibility for Trump, refused to answer three times on Morning Joe this a.m. whether Trump was fit to be president.
posted by chris24 at 12:13 PM on June 7, 2016


Obama doesn't want to be a justice

Barack Obama, that is.
posted by Etrigan at 12:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


idiocracy portrays this by presenting its central concept—that idiots breed more than smarts do—in a meme-length video with catchy, bright graphics, and then by depicting its idiots by having them spout all manner of meme-length and meme-catchy phrases. Its hero is completely uninteresting, its plot is an afterthought, and the film as a whole fails to present anything remotely resembling intellectual thought.

THATSTHEJOKE.JPG
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


if Trump wins, there's a 90% chance that his presidency will be such a disaster that, if there the USA is still an electoral democracy, (indeed, if the world is still inhabited by non-radioactive mutants) in 2020, the GOP will likely never hold the office of president for the the lifetime of every living millenial.
You're assuming a fair playing field, which Republicans have demonstrated a commitment to ending.

Over the last 30 years, they have gone all in on blatant gerrymandering, stacked the Supreme Court with partisan justices who literally handed the presidency to George W. Bush while declaring that the decision could not be used as a precedent, had same court issue ridiculous decisions blocking essentially all limits on campaign donations or even disclosure of them, and passed a series of voter suppression laws after said Supreme Court thrown out the core of the Voting Rights Act.

No offense intended, but thinking that "the bad results will make everyone vote against them" is dangerously naive.
posted by msalt at 12:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


Would they? I haven't seen any evidence that the base itself cares very much about this nomination. It seems localized to the Congress Republicans.

My father is more "rank and file" than "base,"(he votes Republican but he's not super fired up or active or anything) Republican, but the Supreme Court is the one thing that he's said might drive him to vote for Trump. He turned out in the North Carolina primary for Ted Cruz, but said he really preferred Kasich. He hates Trump and seemingly agrees that he'd be a crackpot who is bad for the country, but is on the fence about staying home because he doesn't want Hillary getting to appoint someone to the Supreme Court. I have no clue how many people are thinking that way, but he's one.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I still believe that Cruz has been promised aid in being the nominee in 2020, judging by how much Ken Cuchinelli is pushing "no no don't steal the election from Trump guys, just Make Us Heard! You don't want to Hurt Cruz's Chances Later!"

The Supreme Court thing is the only thing picking off our #nevertrumpers, sadly.
posted by corb at 12:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


doesn't want Hillary getting to appoint someone to the Supreme Court. I have no clue how many people are thinking that way, but he's one.

to be clear, by "This nomination" I meant the Garland one.
posted by zutalors! at 12:25 PM on June 7, 2016


Kinda makes you wonder what kind of person they'll run in 2020, given the trend.

Marshmallow Head Stick Figure 2020!
posted by krinklyfig at 12:27 PM on June 7, 2016


pig's head on a stake covered in flies 2020
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


Bernie and his die-hard supporters represent a significant bloc of the Democratic electorate, and he needs to free them up because this election is fucking scary and a Trump president would be a catastrophe. I appreciate his economic ideals and would gladly have backed him for president, but his time is over and he's putting the whole country in jeopardy by actively hindering the process of consolidation.

The most terrifying thing to me is the number of young progressives i know who simply wont vote or will write someone in if he does drop out. I fight with them almost every goddamn day, but they flat out refuse to buckle on this going "well Trump and Clinton are awful too for different reasons i refuse to be pushed into a box!".

Some of these people are trans, or POC. I... don't get it. It always falls back to "they WANT you to think those are you only two options, they forget not participating is a vote too!".

Not just him stepping down, but his supporters stepping down and talking their friends down is going to be a big thing here. The "fuck the system" from people who aren't nihilistic burn-the-world-down accelerationist knobs who would switch to Trump just to stir the pot is going to be a big thing here.

And to be clear, this isn't like one or two people. This is probably close to ten i've talked to offline, and 10-20 on facebook and such.

I suspect some will back down when they realize Trump really could win, because the general consensus seems to be that he never could, and they don't want to cast a vote on principal out of general disgust. None of them are "i'm moving out of the country" types because they couldn't.
posted by emptythought at 12:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


It's been said before but please Hillary nominate Obama for Scalia's seat. Some conservative heads would literally explode.

An Eric Holder nomination would fill this role perfectly.
posted by chaoticgood at 12:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Apparently being a Supreme Court Justice is kind of deathly boring, and Obama strikes me as the type of dude who would be intent on actually enjoying his retirement.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


McConnell is probably not going to get a more centrist nominee than Garland under Clinton and if they lose the senate they might get a more liberal jurist....My guess is that they do a quick confirmation in November and December to avoid having to deal with this next year.

If for no reason other than to keep the country saner in the future, if it gets that far Garland and/or Obama should withdraw the nomination on Nov 1 and replace it with someone as liberal as possible. You republicans in the Senate want to confirm a perfectly reasonable nominee? At least *pretend* to be statesmen instead of skin-covered mucous-minions of some dark power, and take the compromise offered you.

I'd like to believe there's sliver of a chance that once the primaries are completely settled and nobody has to fear a challenge from increasing portion of the party that's totally unhinged, Senate Republicans may walk back their recalcitrance. That would be evidence that McConnell and co are merely tough operators instead of unalloyed enemies of anything good.
posted by wildblueyonder at 12:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


The idea that the country would tolerate four years of eight justices seems kind of bonkers on the face. All excuses go out the window once the election happens, because the Rs have what they wanted. The cover is entirely blown, and everyone is still mad because of Trump's awfulness.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:36 PM on June 7, 2016


Justice Holder...that would be perfection.

Obama has certainly said he doesn't want it, but it would be difficult to find a lawyer (especially a Constitutional law prof) who wouldn't give anything for that job. It's the dream. (As much as I love Obama, I would prefer a justice with less...expansive views on extrajudicial killing by drone.)
posted by sallybrown at 12:36 PM on June 7, 2016


Sadly that's probably not too far off - too often humanity has to get down in the shit before we begin to really shovel it. Too bad we'll taking generations to get back to where we were instead of moving forward.
posted by charred husk at 11:22 AM on June 7 [+] [!]


Eponytragical...
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm so tired of hearing from fellow people of color, many of them women, that there is little difference between Clinton and Trump. People who I previously thought to have decent, even exceptional, critical thinking skills. Guess I've learned something about my ability to assess other people's thinking skills...
posted by bardophile at 12:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Nominating someone from the previous administration seems like a punk move. Less inbreeding, more diversity.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


To be clear, I'm referring to people I'm hearing from not in this thread, but rather on Facebook and in real life.
posted by bardophile at 12:40 PM on June 7, 2016


(or, more generally: less rockstar politics, more boring politics)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


> Looks like Florida AG Pam Bondi may have solicited and recieved contributions from Trump before their investigation

So, How Many People Have Sold Themselves Out to Trump?
It looks as though Florida's going to be a target-rich environment for anyone looking for influential people who sold themselves out to He, Trump at one point or another, never dreaming that he would be the presidential nominee. He's like all those pet pythons with whom Floridians got bored and then turned loose in the Everglades. He is the ultimate invasive species.
posted by homunculus at 12:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Al Gore would be a crystalline-perfect Supreme Court nominee.
posted by yesster at 12:43 PM on June 7, 2016


Al Gore would be a crystalline-perfect Supreme Court nominee.

He's a bit old for it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:46 PM on June 7, 2016


> Al Gore would be a crystalline-perfect Supreme Court nominee.

I was holding out for the 90's nostalgia Clinton-Gore presidential ticket. He's still eligible, even though he's been elected President once.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't know whether to laugh, clutch my pearls, or grab the bourbon

trade the pearls for more bourbon just in case
posted by poffin boffin at 12:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


Guess I've learned something about my ability to assess other people's thinking skills...

I am absolutely not one of those people and will vote for Clinton and all that, but I find these sorts of statements an awful part of this election. You don't have to question people's mental abilities just because they disagree with you. It seems like soooo many would rather build up their own egos (because of course people think their own opinions are the correct ones) rather than respect that not everyone agrees on things and that's OK.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


And if you're in San Francisco (or anywhere similar), leave yourself plenty of time to get through the zillion-page ballot.

In case anyone's dreading the drudgery of voting, just a heads-up that the SF ballot is literally two pages, and a couple of the races (Kamala Harris vs. Loretta Sanchez for U.S. Senate, Jane Kim vs. Scott Wiener for State Senate Dist. 11) are basically dry-runs for November.

ALSO - I just learned this at the naturalization ceremony we held this morning (welcoming over a thousand new Americans!) but: new citizens are eligible for same-day registration in CA, so if you happen to know anyone who falls in that group, they are welcome at the local Department of Elections until 8 p.m.
posted by psoas at 12:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


yesster: "Al Gore would be a crystalline-perfect Supreme Court nominee."

He never finished law school.
posted by octothorpe at 12:51 PM on June 7, 2016


You don't have to question people's mental abilities just because they disagree with you.

Of course not. But if someone straightfacedly makes the claim that they cannot find a single way in which Clinton and Trump significantly differ, it is not unreasonable to call into question either their critical thinking skills or their sincerity.
posted by dersins at 12:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [26 favorites]




He never finished law school.

phew, we dodged a bullet in '00!
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Apparently being a Supreme Court Justice is kind of deathly boring, and Obama strikes me as the type of dude who would be intent on actually enjoying his retirement.

oh my god i hope he trolls the entire world and announces his plans to run for president of kenya
posted by poffin boffin at 12:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [38 favorites]


It looks as though Florida's going to be a target-rich environment

Target rich environment you say?
posted by Talez at 12:53 PM on June 7, 2016


My parents are late-50s and mid-60s and liberal. Both voted Sanders in the primary, both most definitely plan to vote for Clinton in the general, so there's no point in my picking a fight with them about it... but they both say that they personally don't like her and find her 'smug,' and feel she doesn't care about 'regular' people very much and is power-hunger for power's own sake.

I myself am in my late 20s and barely remember the Lewinsky scandal as a grade-school joke, and it's weird - I just simply don't see that. People state it as fact, but for me it's like I'm seeing one thing and being told something totally different.

I mean, sure, she's not a down-home aw-shucks everywoman, but why should anyone expect her to be? She's been operating the levers of power for longer than I've been alive. She isn't a 'regular person' - and isn't that a good thing? I know a hell of a lot of regular people and none of them should be the damn President, because they would never be able to handle it.

Of all the people I know, the closest equivalent to Clinton I can think of is my boss's boss. She runs an international NGO which does high-level policy advocacy, and is on a first-name basis with the Ministers of Justice of a couple dozen countries. She is constantly working - we get emails from her at 3am, and that's when she isn't in some far-flung time zone. Her ability to multitask is insane, her vision is staggering, her confidence in her ability to actually change the word is inspiring.

But is she a 'regular person'? Hell no. And is she 'likeable'? Who the hell cares?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [85 favorites]


Mark Kirk must be feeling the heat from Tammy Duckworth's "silence is betrayal" speech yesterday, because he's just announced that he "can not and will not support my party's candidate for President."
posted by zombieflanders at 12:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


I am absolutely not one of those people and will vote for Clinton and all that, but I find these sorts of statements an awful part of this election. You don't have to question people's mental abilities just because they disagree with you. It seems like soooo many would rather build up their own egos (because of course people think their own opinions are the correct ones) rather than respect that not everyone agrees on things and that's OK.

While i'm not a fan of statements that directly attack the intelligence of someone you disagree with, refusing to participate is not a traditional disagreement. "I'm taking my ball and going home" is not the same as "i'm choosing a different option from you and we disagree", even if they try and present it as such.

I think that's part of what brings out that sort of response, although it has definitely popped up in other areas of discussion(often in disappointing or gross ways) this election.

Someone saying they'd rather be nude than wear a red or blue shirt is a lot different than even someone saying they dislike both options and will wear an orange one. That's part of the bafflement, especially when it comes down to "so you'd rather freeze?".

I'll also note that i'm not some white guy who just thinks ~people are being foolish~ here. I'm native american, and a tribal member... And could see myself getting fucked over even though i'm disappointed in some of the fucking Obama did nothing about.

There is definitely a strain of condescension and "I know better than you that you could get hurt" in these discussions you just can't wring out, and i understand peoples squicking at that. What i don't understand is the actual refusal to engage when material harm is right there.

Just because the rhetoric and interpersonal engagement style bugs you doesn't mean that the underlying problem and choice in response to it is bad. It's not just about disagreeing with it, especially when it's other people who are in harms way saying "what the fuckkkk".
posted by emptythought at 12:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


And is she 'likeable'? Who the hell cares?

In 2000, the media was all about how "likable" George W. Bush was, how much he was the guy you wanted to have a beer with compared to that sighing wonk Al Gore. Look where that got us.
posted by Gelatin at 12:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


I just got back from voting, guys! Only one day after the race was called, so that's close enough!

NBC is reporting that Senator Mark Kirk (R) from Illinois has withdrawn his support for Donald Trump in November and says he can not and will not vote for his party's nominee. First pebble of the avalanche?
posted by Justinian at 12:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


The most terrifying thing to me is the number of young progressives i know who simply wont vote or will write someone in if he does drop out. I fight with them almost every goddamn day, but they flat out refuse to buckle on this going "well Trump and Clinton are awful too for different reasons i refuse to be pushed into a box!".

Time will heal some of that. With Bernie still jumping up and down and howling at the moon that I'M STILL IN THE RACE DAMMIT AND IF I LOSE THE ESTABLISHMENT STOLE IT FROM ME, of _course_ many of his Tear It All Down supporters are going to be equally in denial. Give it two months, when the nominations are official and the wounds aren't quite as fresh and Trump is on Meet the Press declaring that he'll pave over Mecca and sell Alaska back to the Russians when elected, and most of them will come around.

I suspect some will back down when they realize Trump really could win, because the general consensus seems to be that he never could, and they don't want to cast a vote on principal out of general disgust.

The more pertinent question is not "can Trump win" but "can Trump win MY STATE?" If your friends live in battleground states, then yes, their coming around is significant. If they're in Oklahoma or Vermont, well, only so much harm can be done.

(And, yes, harm can be done -- if they stay home, instead of writing in Howard the Duck for Prez but voting reasonably on state and local offices and conservatives sneak into those due to apathy. Part of swaying the Bernouts is reminding them that this isn't a single-office ballot coming up.)
posted by delfin at 12:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]




yesster: "Al Gore would be a crystalline-perfect Supreme Court nominee."

He never finished law school.


There is no requirement for a Supreme Court Justice to have attended, much less finished, law school. In fact, there are no Constitutional requirements to be a Justice whatsoever, other than that they "shall hold their offices during good behaviour".
posted by Etrigan at 1:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Mark Kirk must be feeling the heat from Tammy Duckworth's "silence is betrayal" speech yesterday, because he's just announced that he "can not and will not support my party's candidate for President."

He's got an uphill battle in general, right? He came in on that 2010 wave, but he's in a solidly blue state and facing a very tough opponent with national name recognition.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


And is she 'likeable'? Who the hell cares?


One of the things that's been interesting for me personally in this election cycle has been my shift, as I get to know more about Clinton, from seeing her as Lucille-Bluth-lite to seeing her as a total Lisa Simpson/Leslie Knope.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 1:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [55 favorites]


Wow, I hadn't heard about this. As if I needed a reason to hate the Human Rights Campaign more. One of the ten Senate seats most likely to flip and give the Dems a majority, and you endorse the Republican in a hamfisted attempt at bipartisanship - even though you gave the Democrat a perfect score on their own 'equality report card'? Fuck you.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


It's not their disagreement that I have a problem with. It's the statement, which is demonstrably false in so many ways, that there isn't much difference between Clinton and Trump. I coach debate. I'm very comfortable with people disagreeing with me and have no trouble admiring and respecting when they do it well.

In this particular case, I only attempt to take the conversation further if I think there is a possibility that they vote in a battleground state.
posted by bardophile at 1:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yes. Mark Kirk is the first domino that will fall in the Senate. He was up against an uninspired political neophyte, Alexi Giannoulias, who was also involved the family business which was a bank, at a time when the banks were rather more unpopular than usual.

Basically the stars aligned for Kirk to get elected in 2010 and it is not going to happen again barring some pretty major plot twist.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:10 PM on June 7, 2016


Yeah, I still get mail from the HRC, but I gave up donating to them a while over stuff like that.
posted by tavella at 1:10 PM on June 7, 2016


Oh and he totes said he was gonna be a good little moderate establishment centrist Republican of the old-fashioned Midwestern variety.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:12 PM on June 7, 2016


[Gore]'s still eligible, even though he's been elected President once.

Man, jokes about this are gonna hurt for the rest of my life aren't they
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [35 favorites]


And, now, as a palate cleanser between more servings of heaping plates of grar, may I present:

Donald Trump’s Short Fingers: A Historical Analysis
posted by y2karl at 1:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]




The last thing we need is for him to morph into a more thoughtful, presidential persona—which I totally believe he could do, because the man is a talented sociopath who will act however he thinks he needs to act to get what he wants. The GOP establishment is already pressuring him to do this, and he very well might.

Sociopath he may be, high-caliber actor he is not. I don't think he's ever changed his persona; I think he's used his money and the power it gave him to pay off or bully people out of his way. But I also think he crumbles and lashes out at the slightest real opposition (as we've seen) or even being asked a tough question. He's never learned how to be tough because his money and his bombast meant people got out of his way or even liked him. But underneath that shell, he's a spineless little slug and the only real question is if the media decides to cover for his weakness or not. They really like the ratings he brings, and have a corruption problem of their own, so it's hard to know.
posted by emjaybee at 1:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


At this point I think it's about 50/50 if Trump quits in a huff before the convention. Which I have mixed feelings about, since Cruz is the likely replacement, and he's a) a Dominionst who has literally been raised to believe he is the messiah, and b) slightly more electable than Trump. Only very slightly in my opinion, but he at least knows the theory of how to wear a human-skin suit long enough to be elected.
posted by tavella at 1:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


the problem is literally everybody can tell he's wearing a skin suit. the tag from the skin suit store is still hanging off the back
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [33 favorites]


...and b) slightly more electable than Cruz.

But what if one of them pushes his identical twin off the cliff ?
posted by y2karl at 1:18 PM on June 7, 2016


This Trump judge thing (both on the Trump side and the GOP establishment side) is so fucking nuts that I can't believe that the RNC isn't shitting its pants trying to figure out a way to change the convention rules to give the nomination to literally anyone else.
posted by Automocar at 1:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm sort of expecting them to toss a golden snitch into the crowd at the convention and just go with whoever catches it
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


TRUMP / MALFOY 2016
posted by dersins at 1:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


I'm sort of expecting them to toss a golden snitch into the crowd at the convention and just go with whoever catches it

Lee Jordan: THE SNITCH HAS BEEN CAUGHT! AND IT'S... uh... Gregory Goyle? oh, uh, ok
Goyle: *gormless grin*
posted by duffell at 1:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


I began as a Hillary supporter mostly with pragmatic resignation- and affection for Sanders. Increasingly, as I've volunteered for her-- I'm a youngish man-- I've been more and more moved by the women volunteering with me. The volunteers are far and away majority women, young and old, but skewing towards middle-aged folks. They are practical and smart and I'm learning lots from them. And, mostly quietly, they know that they are part of a liberation movement. They have spent their lives being dismissed and less safe because they are women. They - like my mother- smuggled friends to Canada before Roe V Wade. They are still working to make things better. They are about to help give us a President who can tell that story herself. I am so so glad that we are on the verge of winning.
posted by SandCounty at 1:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [77 favorites]


In more "this convention is going to be crazy" news, looks like Rafael Cruz, Cruz's hellfire breathing Dominionist dad, has been elected as a delegate from Texas.
posted by corb at 1:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Trump released a new statement about Judge Curiel. Apparently it's not about the Judge's heritage, but about ethics in judging or something. And the media are all liars because all Trump U students were happy and the unhappy ones could get refunds and we'll just not question why such happy students complained to their Attorney General about me.
posted by zachlipton at 1:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Interestingly, Trump also says he does "not intend to comment on this matter any further." Are we taking bets on how long that promise will last?
posted by zachlipton at 1:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


That's the interesting question about a Trump implosion. If he suddenly takes his marbles and goes home, who would the RNC nominate? I can't think it would be Cruz, if only because he never removes the sales tag from his skin suit (as pointed out).

But if not Cruz, then who? I can't think of anyone else on this year's GOP candidate list who would work. Jeb didn't want to be there. Rubio couldn't even win his own state. Kasich is a boring non-entity who is still largely unknown after a lengthy campaign. I suppose they'd draft Ryan. Who would be quite humble and aw-shucks about it, after having orchestrated the whole thing in the background.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:32 PM on June 7, 2016


Corb, do the Cruz supporters you know agree with his Dominionist orientation, or just see him as more palatable alternative than Trump?
I find them both very scary as presidential candidates, for different reasons, but I'm curious about patterns of support within the Republican party.
posted by Superplin at 1:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I like the straightforward clarity of this part of Trump's statement:

the Judge’s reported associations with certain professional organizations.
posted by diogenes at 1:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Are we taking bets on how long that promise will last?

I call 6 PM.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Trump released a new statement about Judge Curiel.

The second line of Trump's statement is literally the cliched "some of my best friends are..." gambit.
posted by aught at 1:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Are we taking bets on how long that promise will last?
I call 6 PM.


I'll give 1:3 odds he breaks before 6pm tomorrow.
posted by Theta States at 1:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Here's the thing about it though: if Trump wins, there's a 90% chance that his presidency will be such a disaster that, if there the USA is still an electoral democracy, (indeed, if the world is still inhabited by non-radioactive mutants) in 2020, the GOP will likely never hold the office of president for the the lifetime of every living millenial.
This sort of thinking been tried here in Europe.

The inexcusable idea that it would be remotely acceptable to throw vulnerable people under the bus by electing Trump to bring about some sort of hypothetical 'revolution,' the ideological hard left in Italy tried that with refusing to vote against Berlusconi and ended up stuck with the hideously corrupt, violent, ridiculous bastard for nearly two decades when he bullied the Italian media into submission to his cult of personality. The short fingered moldy pumpkin has explicitly laid out his plans to follow roughly the same career path of marching right over anything that opposes him with the full power of the executive branch and more.

Its beyond naive to suggest that the left wing would somehow have more electoral power with a neo-fascist orange dumpster fire seeking to dominate the increasingly scattered remains of the institutions that support our democracy.
posted by Blasdelb at 1:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [55 favorites]


Isn't it too late to put Ryan on the ballot?
posted by bardophile at 1:38 PM on June 7, 2016


For what it's worth, I don't think Cruz actually is a Dominionist, or even a Dominionist-lite- I think he probably has unconscious attitudes shaped by growing up in that, but I don't think he's got conscious Dominionism. However, Eyebrows had a great comment on how some forms of Dominionism are mostly about getting Christians elected and setting up a "better world", and there's definitely some threads of that.

The threads I see are:

1) Crypto-libertarians
2) Constitutionalists (who also have some feels about America's Past)
3) Religious conservatives
4) please god not Trump
posted by corb at 1:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


refusing to participate is not a traditional disagreement.

Sure it is. "Here are two choices; they both suck" "okay then, neither!" is a perfectly acceptable disagreement. In a solidly Democratic state, where someone like Trump isn't going to win regardless, these people's choosing to opt out of the process is unlikely to affect the outcome. In a solidly Republican state, where Trump is going to win anyway, someone of liberal/progressive/whatever inclinations, faced with the choice of "cast an essentially meaningless vote for this candidate you didn't want to win the nomination, or don't vote at all" is more likely to choose the latter. (It'd be really nice if all the people who are all "OMG you have to vote for Hillary or we're all doomed" would try to remember that not everyone is in a swing state.)
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is interesting. I'm scrolling randomly through this PDF of Trump University evaluations (from Trump's 98percentapproval.com, sidenote: dictators don't even poll that well). The forms ask participants to rate each staff member from the seminars. A handful give mediocre ratings, but I also see a non-trivial number where people rated a staffer "4," crossed that out," then rated them a "5" instead (e.g. page 37). I'm sure no pressure (or the staffer doing it themselves) was involved there.
posted by zachlipton at 1:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Isn't it too late to put Ryan on the ballot?

The party can put whoever it wants on the ballot -- registration deadlines are for independent candidates and parties that haven't polled well enough in past elections to get an automatic spot. It's if Trump drops out after being formally nominated that things get dicey, because at that point the party has already decided who it wants to put on the ballot.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Its beyond naive to suggest that the left wing would somehow have more electoral power with a neo-fascist orange dumpster fire seeking to dominate the increasingly scattered remains of the institutions that support our democracy.

Counterpoint: Clinton wears expensive clothes!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


I am absolutely not one of those people and will vote for Clinton and all that, but I find these sorts of statements an awful part of this election. You don't have to question people's mental abilities just because they disagree with you. It seems like soooo many would rather build up their own egos (because of course people think their own opinions are the correct ones) rather than respect that not everyone agrees on things and that's OK.

But... it's actually provable that Clinton and Trump are NOT the same. I mean, how much respect am I supposed to give someone who continually posts that NOPE meme with the pic of their faces melded together as a legitimate response to people that ask them to please actually do the research?
posted by palomar at 1:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Ah, thank you for that clarification, Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish!
posted by bardophile at 1:45 PM on June 7, 2016


This just in from the Reductress,
I’m Not Political (Because I Assume I Will Retain All of My Privileges Forever)
"Listen guys, I get it. You hate the orange guy with the crazy hair. You love the old guy with the crazy hair. You think Hillary is a woman but she sends too many emails. Wow, you’re soooo political. Good for you. I just don’t like to get into that sort of thing. I’d rather abstain from all the petty name-calling and meme-swapping because I believe that life is about more than just politics. (Also, because I’m pretty sure that whatever happens will not affect my day-to-day life in any way because I’m not a member of a historically oppressed group.)

I guess politics has never appealed to me because I just don’t enjoy arguing (things I do enjoy: massages, sriracha, extreme privilege as the result of a class system rigged in my favor, NOT ARGUING). I don’t need to spend hours debating what led to the Iraq War—it feels like it went by super fast anyways (since no one in my social circle had to join the military to pay for college). It’s not important to me that I understand the best solution to economic inequality—my great-grandfather invented steel. While some people need to always be right, I would rather always be kind. Maybe if everyone were always kind, we wouldn’t even need politics (I don’t know what poverty is because my father invested in soybean futures). Honestly, if more people were like me (low-key rich, able-bodied), we wouldn’t have to have these fights about things that don’t affect me and never will.

Another thing I don’t like about politics is how it divides people. I believe that we are all the same (almost all my friends went to the same college). So I think we should be able to find common ground when it comes to the major issues affecting our lives, whatever those may be. My best friend is actually a socially conservative libertarian and I have never once let that come between us because I have never asked her what that means and she always has weed. If you’ve been on social media lately, you know that it can seem like politics is impossible to avoid. But imagine for a second what would happen if we replaced all the angry rants about healthcare and immigration with pictures of kittens and puppies. I, for one, would definitely feel better. I already have healthcare and don’t know why anyone would want to change countries—it sounds like it would be really difficult!

In conclusion, I know it’s fun sometimes to get all riled up and scream at the TV. But I’m pretty sure that, come November, whether we elect the guy from The Apprentice or the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm, everything is going to be okay (at least for me)."
posted by Blasdelb at 1:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [49 favorites]


On a happier note, mother-in-law and I both have ice cream, stickers and are snuggling with our respective doggies waiting for Hillary's speech.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


I suspect that the last-legally-difficult way for the RNC to deal if Trump flames out (and I'd love to see what color flame his weird hair and spray tan would produce) would be to promote the Officially Nominated VP Candidate to the top role. Which is why one of the most fascinating things for me between now and the convention will be Trumpy's choice for running mate. He has to know that if he chooses anybody with any serious status within the GOP, it'll just increase the intra-party pressure against him.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not only do we not live in battleground states, most of us don't. The election will be decided by how much money Clinton and Trump can throw at advertisers in a tiny handful of states in a desperate effort to get a few mostly ignorant people to get off their butts and vote.

Yes, I'm bitter.

The Electoral College votes for my state will go to Trump. There's just no question, no other possibility, no hope for a different outcome. I'm in Texas.

Worse, I'm in the 21st Congressional District, thanks to some very careful gerrymandering, so my vote for the House won't matter, the winner will be Lamar smith.

Other than my devotion to voting, I honestly might as well stay home on election day. And that's the situation for the vast majority of Americans. We simply don't matter, our votes don't count, the Electoral College is settled in most places, the House is gerrymandered to such an extent that it takes either a major scandal or an act of God to get rid of a sitting Representative (and possibly neither will work).

I guess it makes the people in the swing states feel special, but for me all it does is reaffirm my deep rooted commitment to a national popular vote and the end of the obscene anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College. Which will probably never happen, but I can still hope.
posted by sotonohito at 1:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


> (It'd be really nice if all the people who are all "OMG you have to vote for Hillary or we're all doomed" would try to remember that not everyone is in a swing state.

I would agree with that sentiment in any other year but I think a lot of conventional wisdom about elections might be going out the window right and I would really rather not find out about that after the fact so ...

uh, unless you like orange dumpster fires please go vote for Hilary in November.
posted by Tevin at 1:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


David Brin's been prognosticating for a while about Ryan becoming a dramatic last minute nominee for a little while now. Weird if that happened - of course, weird that Bush II happened...
posted by Golem XIV at 1:59 PM on June 7, 2016


one of the most fascinating things for me between now and the convention will be Trumpy's choice for running mate.
If there’s one thing this past year has demonstrated, it’s that I am not good at guessing the actions of Trump or the GOP, but my guess is Pat Buchanan.
posted by nicepersonality at 2:00 PM on June 7, 2016


Pat Buchanan, who scared the fuck out of people during 92? (Which only Al Franken was wise enough to see at the time.)

Franken for VP, it would be the inverse of Why Not Me?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


and I'd love to see what color flame his weird hair and spray tan would produce

Well, molybdate was a widely used orange pigment, and contained high levels of lead and chromium, which are consistent with our candidate's violent idiocy. Molybdenum and lead give off greenish flames when burned, while chromium is a silver-white, so I'm gonna go with nuclear green.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


It'd be really nice if all the people who are all "OMG you have to vote for Hillary or we're all doomed" would try to remember that not everyone is in a swing state

As far as I'm concerned, folks can vote (or not vote) however they please. But goddamn this particular argument annoys me. Sufficient numbers of people not voting (e.g. because their state is a safe state) is one good way to turn a safe state into a swing state.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [45 favorites]


I loved this moment from this article that was linked in the previous thread:

Her eyes lit up; it’s as if she’d been waiting for someone to ask her about the surprising possibilities of the electoral map this year. So which states do you think Trump puts in play? I asked, mentioning the possibility of Georgia, which some think could go Democratic for the first time since her husband won it in 1992.

“Texas!” she exclaimed, eyes wide, as if daring me to question this, which I did. “You are not going to win Texas,” I said. She smiled, undaunted. “If black and Latino voters come out and vote, we could win Texas,” she told me firmly, practically licking her lips.


I don't know enough about voting trends to know if that's as crazy as it sounds. I do know that Clinton is not stupid. But that stuck with me enough that it was the first thing I thought of when I read that comment - that image of her leaning forward in her seat, exclaiming "Texas!"
posted by sunset in snow country at 2:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [29 favorites]


Sufficient numbers of people not voting (e.g. because their state is a safe state) is one good way to turn a safe state into a swing state.

I don't actually think this is true. New York is not in danger.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:07 PM on June 7, 2016




Some examples of changed Trump University survey results, found in a few minutes of haphazard scrolling. This pattern is present across different years, instructors, and locations. Given the sales pressure they put on these folks, a bit of pressure to give a good survey rating is nothing.
posted by zachlipton at 2:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm going to go with Ted Cruz:

1) Only elected Republican hated anywhere near as much as he is

2) Would appeal to Cruz's unholy lust for power

3) Attractive to evangelicals

4) Has no soul

5) Ill-fitting human skinsuit distracts from Trump's hair and skin
posted by zombieflanders at 2:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


My most cynical instincts tell me that Trump will pick a deeply socially conservative black pastor as his running mate in a truly pathetic attempt to deflect charges of racism and phony faith.

Trump is not what you'd call subtle.
posted by duffell at 2:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sufficient numbers of people not voting (e.g. because their state is a safe state) is one good way to turn a safe state into a swing state.

Yes, the "Bern it down" contingent here in the wet side and the failure of likely voter models to capture white nationalist voters means hell yes I'm voting.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


i imagine that trump would likely prefer a cringing pusillanimous lickspittle as his sidekick, like voldemort and pettigrew. so chris christie, presumably.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


I don't actually think this is true. New York is not in danger.

We can go back and forth for several rounds litigating exactly how much of an electoral shift it would take to put states in various shades of bluish purple in play, or we can agree that the only thing that makes states blue, red, or purple is how many people vote for each party's nominee, and that at least some states currently considered safe blue could be put into play by people thinking their vote won't affect the outcome.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


We can go back and forth for several rounds litigating exactly how much of an electoral shift it would take to put states in various shades of bluish purple in play, or we can agree that the only thing that makes states blue, red, or purple is how many people vote for each party's nominee, and that at least some states currently considered safe blue could be put into play by people thinking their vote won't affect the outcome.

I also think it's worth noting that blue states--even deeply blue states--elect Republican governors all the time, and at a political moment when everyone's talking about how the "normal rules don't apply," I'm sure as shit not going to sit on my hands on Election Day here in Maryland.
posted by duffell at 2:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


"I don't have to do the needful thing because other people will vote for the not-terrible candidate in my state" is one of those things that's factually correct but not really a super defensible stance on the merits. Like, cool, you get to write in a wacky candidate and fist-bump your conscience for not having to vote for the lesser of two evils because your state is full of boring normies who'll vote for the 1 out of 2 candidates who won't burn the world with wildfire? Cool. Cool cool cool
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [54 favorites]


Looking for a running mate, Trump may have some of his people following these people begging "ple-e-e-e-eze"...
Chuck Norris
Ted Nugent
Dennis Miller
Kelsey Grammer
Jon Voight
Glenn Beck
although he may be worried some of them might somehow upstage him - that's why Clint Eastwood, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter (well, also because of 'the woman card' for Ann) aren't on the list.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:18 PM on June 7, 2016


other than Omarosa, whom I know will be the VP nominee*, I really still think Ivanka or Jared Kushner are strong possibilities.

*YOU CAN TAKE THIS TO THE BANK
posted by sallybrown at 2:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


because your state is full of boring normies who'll vote for the 1 out of 2 candidates who won't burn the world with wildfire? Cool. Cool cool cool

Yeah, bit of a prisoner's dilemma there. You get to salve your conscience by defecting... but if enough people defect everybody dies in a conflagration.
posted by Justinian at 2:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


The reason I care about people voting for Clinton even if they don't live in a swing state is that I had to live through 8 years of Bill Clinton's presidency with every GOP talking head on TV saying "This president doesn't even have a mandate!" because he didn't get a strict majority of the popular vote.

From a political perspective, there is a difference in perceived power if it's 55-45 Clinton-Trump instead of 48-41-11 Clinton-Trump-LizardPeople.
posted by 0xFCAF at 2:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


Glenn Beck is probably not someone who would make a good VP pick for Trumpsky
posted by saturday_morning at 2:21 PM on June 7, 2016


The only state that has never voted for a Republican executive at either the state or federal level in the modern age is actually not a state. That's right, the only ones who get to talk smack are DC voters.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


"I don't have to do the needful thing because other people will vote for the not-terrible candidate in my state"

It's a very teenage argument, in line with "why shouldn't I throw garbage out the car window, there's already all kinds of garbage out there, and someone will pick it up".
posted by bongo_x at 2:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


In a solidly Republican state, where Trump is going to win anyway, someone of liberal/progressive/whatever inclinations, faced with the choice of "cast an essentially meaningless vote for this candidate you didn't want to win the nomination, or don't vote at all" is more likely to choose the latter. (It'd be really nice if all the people who are all "OMG you have to vote for Hillary or we're all doomed" would try to remember that not everyone is in a swing state.)"
We appear to be in the middle of a political reorientation that may end up as profound as the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, and Trump has proven resistant to conventional predictive models so far, we may have little good idea of what States will be close until the actual election for an unusually large number of States. Regardless, if a decision not to vote truly does end up being meaningless to the Presidential election, it is a politically meaningless protest - no one in the Democratic Party will care how you feel any more as a result. The only thing the party apparatus cares about are delinquent citizens who would help the painted fascist mole rat gain access to the nuclear codes and who would leave their States, municipalities, and cities in the hands of whomever the Republican party has in mind because women aren't relatable.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


I'd love to see what color flame his weird hair and spray tan would produce

What's that color in Discworld? Octarine? I'm gonna go with that or some other unnameable, sickly, poisonous color. Something from Lovecraft.
posted by emjaybee at 2:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


as an aside i just want to state for the permanent forever internets record that if the presumably upcoming thread on next month's DNC is not titled IT'S HOT AS HELL IN PHILADELPHIA then i will fucking riot
posted by poffin boffin at 2:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


I mean, let's not give Mitch McConnell the excuse to get on CSPAN and say "The majority of voters chose someone other than Hillary Clinton. The Supreme Court vacancies should only be filled by a President who earned majority support, and we will continue to filibuster to make sure that happens."

Maintaining your driven-snow ideological purity voting for DeezNuts isn't worth this.
posted by 0xFCAF at 2:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


i imagine that trump would likely prefer a cringing pusillanimous lickspittle as his sidekick, like voldemort and pettigrew. so chris christie, presumably.

Nah, it will be Scott Walker. Trump needs his access to the Koch money spigot, and if there is one political figure easier to bully and dominate than Chris Christie, it's sad-sack dope Walker. Plus, Trump can pretend he has "The Heartland" in mind. Walker gets to walk away from a simmering stew of corruption scandals. Win-win for both of 'em.
posted by Chrischris at 2:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83
Anthony Kennedy is 79
Stephen Breyer is 77
Clarence Thomas is 67
Samuel Alito is 66
John Roberts is 61
Sonia Sotomayor is also 61
Elena Kagan is 56

Trumpo delenda est.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Oh god, if Trump took Walker off our hands I would dance with joy.
posted by The Gaffer at 2:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


If the possibility of safely blue states turning red doesn't scare you, how about this? Vote to deliver Trump a humiliating defeat. Vote to tell the nation (and the world) that the American electorate, for all its foibles, will ultimately punish racist and sexist rhetoric and actions. Think about what a huge margin of victory, even in New York, would tell the people who are most likely to be affected by Trump's proposed policies: that you've got their back. Can you imagine the rush of joy you will feel about the fundamental goodness of the American people if Trump's policies are repudiated firmly in November, with a crushing defeat?
posted by peacheater at 2:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [125 favorites]


> "At this point I think it's about 50/50 if Trump quits in a huff before the convention."

This is really vanishingly unlikely.
posted by kyrademon at 2:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why can't Thomas be 83? Can somebody do some dark magics and switch his age up with RBG?
posted by angrycat at 2:31 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I don't really care if young white people vote tbh they aren't really that important a demo outside of twitter.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Peacheater, that's exactly how I felt when the 2008 election was called for Obama before 10 PM. Even though I knew I voted in a reliably Blue state that was always going to go Democratic. Even though I rolled up at my polling place in a predominantly African-American neighborhood to wait in line for over 2 hours to vote alongside people who had grown up under Jim Crow, whose parents or grandparents may have been slaves. My vote wasn't necessary, but it just felt so, so good.
posted by Sara C. at 2:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


But then, we know The Notorious RBG is immortal... I mean, she has to be.

And I agree that Trump quitting in a huff BEFORE the convention is almost impossible. He's living for the standing ovation from people who don't really like him there. It's once the finals begin that he may decide "aw fuck it, I'm taking my billions and going home" EXCEPT we all know he doesn't really have "billions".
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I continually boggle at how young Clarence Thomas is. He was practically a fetus when he was nominated!

A fetus who had already sexually harassed one of his subordinates.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


What's frightening me are the Trump voters I see around the edges of my Facebook who say things like, "Trump will win in a landslide." So if that doesn't happen, what then?

What's really frightening me though is the thought, "Are they Baghdad Bob? Or am I?"
posted by ob1quixote at 2:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why can't Thomas be 83? Can somebody do some dark magics and switch his age up with RBG?

It would be pretty baller if vampires were real and one of them could turn RBG. LIFETIME TERM, SUCKERS.
posted by duffell at 2:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


If young white people were that vital if a demo the headlines would be different today.

Next time Socialist Dems, let's do the work to make sure that our leftie candidate has the ability to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


maybe everyone should set up a little phone alert or something reminding them every morning that a major party has nominated an unstable and charismatic strongman obsessed with racist conspiracy theories and openly contemptuous of the rule of law, and that he must be stopped at all costs
posted by theodolite at 2:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


If the possibility of safely blue states turning red doesn't scare you, how about this? Vote to deliver Trump a humiliating defeat. Vote to tell the nation (and the world) that the American electorate, for all its foibles, will ultimately punish racist and sexist rhetoric and actions. Think about what a huge margin of victory, even in New York, would tell the people who are most likely to be affected by Trump's proposed policies: that you've got their back. Can you imagine the rush of joy you will feel about the fundamental goodness of the American people if Trump's policies are repudiated firmly in November, with a crushing defeat?

Repeated response i've seen to this that's fair IMO: But that image has already been tarnished or destroyed by the fact that he even made it this far, or was even given airtime. Just because he was shot down doesn't mean that sentiment and mindset don't still have a lot of, and seemingly growing political capital.

Basically, everybody who isn't white already knows the US is racist as hell still. Defeating trump and viewing it this way is basically saying mission accomplished, when trump is only the symptom and not the problem.

Whether he loses by 2% or 30%, he still got to play the game at that level at all with that much support. Losing, assuming he does either way, is less important than the fact that he was taken seriously at all.
posted by emptythought at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Next time Socialist Dems, let's do the work to make sure that our leftie candidate has the ability to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters.

I agree, if by "next time" you mean "starting on November 9th."
posted by tonycpsu at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Think about what a huge margin of victory, even in New York, would tell the people who are most likely to be affected by Trump's proposed policies: that you've got their back. Can you imagine the rush of joy you will feel about the fundamental goodness of the American people if Trump's policies are repudiated firmly in November, with a crushing defeat?

Yup, I'd REALLY APPRECIATE IT if everyone who's shrugging all "my vote doesn't matter anyway" would remember that some of us are feeling awfully unsafe and unwelcome right now in our own country, and even the passive declaration of "we don't support this garbage monster who's moved past dog whistles to full on racism" means something to us.
posted by yasaman at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [64 favorites]


maybe everyone should set up a little phone alert or something reminding them every morning that a major party has nominated an unstable and charismatic strongman obsessed with racist conspiracy theories and openly contemptuous of the rule of law, and that he must be stopped at all costs

REMINDER: EVERYTHING REMAINS TERRIBLE
posted by poffin boffin at 2:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


If the combination of Trump's awful and Clinton's effort can put Texas into play I'd be delighted. I'm still somewhat doubtful, but he does seem to be going far out of his way to piss off every Latinx person on the planet.
posted by sotonohito at 2:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


> pig's head on a stake covered in flies 2020

A *pig's* head? Optimist.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


kyrademon: Possibly, but I was thinking less about Republican pressure and more about how his run is shining a giant spotlight on things like possible bribes to state AGs. And also it seems he is taking a big financial hit in terms of the Trump brand being able to sell abroad.
posted by tavella at 2:39 PM on June 7, 2016


I continually boggle at how young Clarence Thomas is. He was practically a fetus when he was nominated!

A fetus who had already sexually harassed one of his subordinates.


Oh, more than one. Anita Hill is just the only one who testified.
posted by Superplin at 2:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't think he'd choose Walker at all. By the time he dropped out, he was polling at less than 1%. Plus, Walker actively pushed his state's machine to try to stop Trump, throwing strong support behind Cruz.

My guess is Trump either taps Ben Carson or Palin.
posted by drezdn at 2:44 PM on June 7, 2016


There's no way. No way he picks either Carson or Palin.
posted by Justinian at 2:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Just about the only thing that would scare me is if someone like Bloomberg made some kind of hideous super-Faustian bargain.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:46 PM on June 7, 2016


come on, he's gonna pick a slightly smaller than life sized cardboard cutout of himself

despite his smaller stature cardboard trump will have larger hands
posted by poffin boffin at 2:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Christie already had the surgery he's a shoe in
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:48 PM on June 7, 2016


Literally the surgery implanted at least 1 shoe
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:49 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


"That's right, the only ones who get to talk smack are DC voters."

I was reflecting on the primary process as it slowly winds down, and I do actually think there's value to starting with small states where candidates have to do a lot of retail politics, and to a slow start where we get a lot of coverage and vetting and less-funded and less-known candidates can build some name recognition and momentum. And I thought, you know, what if to balance out the white, ruralish characters of Iowa and New Hampshire, Democrats had DC vote third, to get a relatively small electorate but a hyper-urban one and one with a very large minority population, which ALSO is unusually politically aware?

(I actually think Iowa in particular (I know less about NH) is not a terrible state to start for Democrats: Because it's a more centrist and demographically white state, a further left candidate like Sanders, or a demographically non-traditional one (like Obama or Clinton), who does well in Iowa has shown they can sell their candidacy not just to the base but to the wavering centrists in the party who have to be won. Whereas I think it screws Republicans because it overrepresents their evangelical base and boosts fringe GOP candidates who aren't palatable to those wavering centrists that must be captured to win a national majority. But I still think we need to get some more diversity way earlier in the process.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Trump will create a clone of Trump to be the Vice President. He has the best scientists working in a huge, beautiful lab to create the Trump Clone to be Vice President.

Or he may pick a fictional character, such as Batman, or a color, such as teal.

These are best-case-scenarios.
posted by Cookiebastard at 2:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


(Obviously operating under the assumption that Iowa and NH cannot be dethroned and that we're going to be stuck with a drawn-out primary process for the foreseeable future, and pondering how to play within those boundaries.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Democrats can't afford to ignore any demo if they ever want to retake the House.

And Sanders won like 70 percent of voters under 30. You don't do that if you just appeal to white people.

Quite frankly, there are economic reasons his message resonated with millenial voters.

Still, nothing really matters until the Democrats can retake the House. Everyone should be working towards that.

I'm sure President Clinton would prefer not to have a Republics majority fighting her at every turn.
posted by eagles123 at 2:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


One thing that MUST BE NOTED is that if turnout is depressed by a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, it'll be the farthest-left voters who'll sit it out, which will make it more like a mid-term election, when Republicans do freakishly well in the down-ticket races. Yikes.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


PULSATING TEAL SPHERE '20
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Democrats can't afford to ignore any demo if they ever want to retake the House.

This is something that can be leveled at hardline Clinton folks AND hardline Sanders folks. 'Sanders won like 70 percent of voters under 30' might be true, but the fact that it's true and he's still losing the popular primary vote means that voters under 30 aren't the only ones who matter, even if they are obviously the future of the party.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


"Repeated response i've seen to this that's fair IMO: But that image has already been tarnished or destroyed by the fact that he even made it this far, or was even given airtime. Just because he was shot down doesn't mean that sentiment and mindset don't still have a lot of, and seemingly growing political capital."
Its not just us and our perception of safety that matter, and besides, dismissing that as already tarnished when there are vulnerable people in this thread telling us that it matters to them is kinda shitty. Just how solidly Hilary beats Trump matters a hell of a lot for the world and the kinds of actuarial judgments that might seem boring but are absolutely fucking vital to global security and prosperity. With Trump spelling out the end of NATO under his regime, how likely exactly is the success of a future Republican who would say the same thing? If it is, does that mean the EU would have to put itself through the nightmarishly destabilizing prospect of gluing together and funding an effective European Army without American leadership? Trump has said explicitly that he wouldn't even intervene in a war between North Korea and Japan, does that mean Japan needs to remilitarize right the fuck now regardless of the effect that would have on everything in East Asia? His trade plans, at least as he has vaguely articulated them, would rapidly bring global finance and trade to a standstill.

Its not just about us, the whole world depends on their being at least as many brain cells as W had being in the White House. Even the prospect of a President Trump, or Trump successor in the next cycle, will profoundly fuck up a world that is rapidly dragging people out of poverty by the billion, eradicating diseases, exploring the solar system, beginning to address climate change, and crafting ever more cute cat videos for global dissemination. Trump and what he represents within the American electorate is an existential threat to the logistics and validity of the human endeavor. The more soundly he is defeated the safer that is.
posted by Blasdelb at 3:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [41 favorites]


Emergency officials constantly have to deal with people who don't heed warnings/don't take proper precautions.......

Edit: (to showbizliz) Of course. And Sander's people aren't going to be able to accomplish their goals just by appealing to Democratic primary voters either.
posted by eagles123 at 3:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


The problem with "voters under 30" is they've never had it worse than it is now. And, even in my personal maximum-privilege position, I saw some things that were worse than today, and while I'm not thrilled with a "return to the Clinton '90s", I'd prefer it to the Reagan '80s, Nixon '70s or anything earlier... and when a candidate is promising to bring us back to the '30s (AS IT WAS IN GERMANY), our first priority must be preventing that! A step backwards is so much better than a step over the cliff, and a "lesser evil" must be better than "HELL ON EARTH". (Rhetorical overkill not really overkill)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Some people you can't reach. You gotta recognize the limits of your influence and if you can't persuade someone, well, then you couldn't persuade them. Maybe you'll have better luck with someone else (provided you come at it honestly and respectfully which hopefully we're always doing). But there's never an absolute way to convince people to come to your point of view and you have to accept that you might not accomplish what you want.
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Next time Socialist Dems, let's do the work to make sure that our leftie candidate has the ability to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters.

What?

Sanders fits that description. He's run a great campaign and has an incredibly broad appeal and would likely have pulled in voters Clinton will not be able to reach.

If he weren't running against Clinton, who is incredibly capable, has decades in the trenches and the limelight, executive and legislative experience, and also represents a historic possibility, he very likely would have won. As it is, Clinton's margin of victory is not that large.
posted by wildblueyonder at 3:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Its not just us and our perception of safety that matter, and besides, dismissing that as already tarnished when there are vulnerable people in this thread telling us that it matters to them is kinda shitty.

This was not my point. My point was more that:

1. What he's saying is nothing new, just louder and more public. A lot of this was the reality for many people already, it was just privileged people in those areas weren't seeing much of it.

2. The fear that an obvious defeat would make many of the people who were blind to #1 go "See, it's over!!"

I wasn't even getting in to the perception of the rest of the world, nor was i crapping on that or the importance of it. The issue here isn't vulnerable people it matters to, it's less vulnerable people thinking it's over if that does happen.(See also: racism is over because we have a black president now!)

That might seem crappy or uncharitable, but there are an awful lot of people who would react that way. It's a thing.
posted by emptythought at 3:17 PM on June 7, 2016


The Conservative Case for Hillary Clinton:
...here are six reasons why Clinton, from a conservative perspective, would be a better choice for president—or, at least, a less grim one—than Trump.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


1. What he's saying is nothing new, just louder and more public.

Yeah, and that's not trivial. The very fact that all of this is louder and more public is emboldening to racists. Like, there weren't goddamn KKK rallies going on practically in my backyard a couple years ago, and yet now there are.
posted by yasaman at 3:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


If he weren't running against Clinton, who is has decades in the trenches and the limelight, executive and legislative experience, and also represents a historic possibility, he very likely would have won. As it is, Clinton's margin of victory is not that large.

No part of this is even remotely an accurate assessment of what we've spent the last several months enduring.

If Sanders had been running against someone who hadn't been constantly demonized for almost thirty years, he wouldn't even have been in the conversation after Super Tuesday.

(I won't even speculate as to what might have happened if that opponent had been a man, but, I mean, come on.)

As it is, Clinton's margin of victory over Sanders is likely to be significantly greater than Obama's was over her in 2008.
posted by dersins at 3:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


At the risk to of coming across as unserious, can I just say that I wouldn't exactly mind if Europe took more of a role in ensuring its own security and dealing with stuff like terrorism?

I'm not arguing for isolationism, but can we at least recongize that ensuring world piece and pax Americana costs a lot of money?


I think you'll find that it's not really concern for Europe that is causing the US government to spend the giant amounts of money it currently does on its military. Frankly, the US has the largest defense system than every other country in the world combined. Europe's safety is not going to be threatened if the US demilitarizes a little bit - however it does threaten the large profits the military-industrial complex is currently raking in. I think you'll also find that the rest of the world thinks of the US's role in the world as a bit different than "ensuring world peace."
posted by peacheater at 3:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


> I guess it makes the people in the swing states feel special,

I've never lived in a swing state (hello HI, MA, NH, ME, VT, DC, MD, CA!) and my ballots have always been jammed with local initiatives and referenda and stuff like that. Totally worth going to the polls to vote for things that generally affect my life in a much more daily and immediate way that who sits in the Oval Office. I feel strongly that the all-too-repeated mantra of "My vote doesn't count" only serves those who would like your vote to not count.
posted by rtha at 3:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


I've never voted in a swing state and I've still gotten to vote for marriage equality and marijuana legalization, as well as for some very lovely and inspiring Congresscritters. Voting is fun!
posted by sallybrown at 3:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Chilean-American female Trump voter on MSNBC explains why she likes him:
-He is honest.
-He doesn't have to do favors for anybody.
-He's not racist - he just speaks his mind, but he doesn't do it for the purpose of being racist, he just doesn't like the judge.

I agree Trump isn't going to do favors for anybody because all he cares about is himself. But how do you convince someone Trump isn't honest if they still think that after all this?
posted by sallybrown at 3:37 PM on June 7, 2016


I let my 3 year old press the Hillary checkbox this morning in NJ. #startthemyoung
posted by Stynxno at 3:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


I think you'll find that it's not really concern for Europe that is causing the US government to spend the giant amounts of money it currently does on its military. Frankly, the US has the largest defense system than every other country in the world combined. Europe's safety is not going to be threatened if the US demilitarizes a little bit

I realize that to so many Americans "Europe" means "Germany and everything West of it" but the fact is that parts of Europe are presently in the grip of civil war, other parts have recently ben annexed by a foreign power, and those of us over 30 can remember the last time genocide was a thing Europeans did to each other. Violence is still quite the thing in Europe the continent.
posted by AdamCSnider at 3:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


If he weren't running against Clinton, who is has decades in the trenches and the limelight, executive and legislative experience, and also represents a historic possibility, he very likely would have won. As it is, Clinton's margin of victory is not that large.

A bunch of other Dems chose to sit this year out precisely because Clinton was running. It's impossible to say what would have happened in this race if she hadn't run.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Speaker Ryan's conflicting statements on acknowledging Trump's bigotry, then endorsing him, coupled with this assessment are extremely worrying for those of us even further outside the OECD sphere.

Racism, jingoism, macho posturing, and contradictory statements... what could possibly go wrong?

nb: RT is not an endorsement. Elements of that article are author's own political bias
posted by infini at 3:44 PM on June 7, 2016


Sir Edmund would be proud!
posted by clavdivs at 3:47 PM on June 7, 2016


Mod note: Please refer to taz's earlier mod note that you need to "drop all the making it personal stuff, the repetitive arguments that we've had over thousands of comments before, the Sanders/Clinton supporters suck stuff, the "bad person" arguments, and the whole "let's make it all about the that one 'I'm voting for Trump' guy."" and we are deleting with extreme prejudice. Flag things that suck, don't respond to them, and check to see if something's been deleted before you respond. Talk about new breaking news or something, because you are breaking your mod staff with your Clinton/Sanders infighting that has occurred in MORE THAN A DOZEN THREADS NOW.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


I realize that to so many Americans "Europe" means "Germany and everything West of it" but the fact is that parts of Europe are presently in the grip of civil war, other parts have recently ben annexed by a foreign power,

you do understand that's a part of europe we dare not get real involved in, right? - likewise, we need to be real cautious of how we act in e asia, too

now if we had only learned the same kind of caution in the middle east
posted by pyramid termite at 3:48 PM on June 7, 2016


I for one voted for Sanders, not against Clinton. Roughly half the country wants single-payer healthcare, and that number goes way up when you poll younger folks. Sanders speaks passionately to that, and many other important progressive ideas, and he started a remarkably positive campaign centered around that message. That's why Sander's has done well. He's packed in huge crowds of supporters, they weren't sexist, anti-Clinton hate rallies. We want good policy, we voted for it. Most of us will vote for Clinton in November, some of us won't. The lesser of two evils seems to be the only option for a lot of Americans, so that's the lens through which they see everyone else's choices, but some of us want to vote FOR something every once in a while.
posted by Colby_Longhorn at 3:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


What he's saying is nothing new, just louder and more public.

Call me crazy, but I'll always be voting against bigotry. Yes, I already knew that the world was a racist and xenophobic place, and religious minorities, immigrants, and people of color have always had a hard time in this country.

But I fucking hate that and I will fight it until I die. Not because I'm a coddled liberal living in a white ivory tower where I'm allowed to think my silly opinions are normative, but because it's right.

Since when has "racism has always existed so it's no big deal" ever been a reason not to fight racism?
posted by Sara C. at 3:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


The Clinton campaign released a video: History Made.
posted by peeedro at 3:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


The Clinton campaign released a video

I was just coming here to link that because I just watched it and I'm crying now. Goddamn.

Backwards and in high heels, baby.
posted by Salieri at 3:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


The credible deterrence needed on behalf of Europe is most urgently for the former Soviet republics that are part of NATO (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) who look at places like Ukraine, as well as the cyber/economic dirty tricks that Russia already engages in against them, and wonder if NATO is as ironclad as we say it is.
posted by AndrewInDC at 3:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm not typical. I've voted in almost every election, including primaries and special elections, since I've been eligible (back to 1974!). My only major miss was when I was notified my mother had died the morning of Reagan's landslide win in '84... as I was on the last-minute plane to Phoenix I thought "she probably sent off an absentee ballot while she was still breathing... I should advance vote-by-mail from now on". And I have. And I ruled out voting for a non-top-two party candidate early on... I was waiting for a bandwagon big enough to have a chance and the only one I ever saw which came close was Perot who was sadly a little like Trump but 50 I.Q. points smarter. And I've voted for Republicans less than 10% of the time and always after a lot of soul-searching... and knowing that California isn't a totally reliable "blue state" (almost every California Governor we've had since I've been voting has either been Republican or Jerry Brown). The last time I did was Bob Dole against Hillary's husband because I considered him the LAST mostly-honest and mostly-reasonable Republican and wanted to publicly resist the Gingrich-istas taking over half of our political establishment and the "third way" sell-outs taking over the other half. And while I'm at it, I've mentioned before that I've (somewhat masochistically) followed Trump's public career for decades and even when he passed himself off as a "Moderate Democrat" he was on my list of "public figures I'd NEVEREVEREVER vote for". I'm unenthused with Clinton but as I've declared before here, a step backwards is so much better than a step over the cliff, and in a "lesser of two evils" choice, petty-theft evil is much preferable to serial-murderer evil.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Very glad to see transgender women included in the "history made" video.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


The next president is going to be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I believe the best way to advance progressive ideas in this election is to do whatever you can to get Clinton elected president, and to get as many Democrats or progressive Independents elected as possible. In 2008 we elected Obama, but we didn't elect enough Democrats.

I understand preferring Sanders to Clinton and being disappointed that Clinton will be the nominee, but her positions are much, much closer to Sanders' than Trump's are, and she is clearly a better choice than Trump.

Also, keep pushing for those progressive ideas. Work and vote in the midterms. Elect progressive candidates at all levels of government. Support a progressive challenger to Clinton in 2020. It may seem like the battle's lost but the war is far from over.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:02 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]




So for a datapoint- I have friends that have been making me crazy by saying they are voting for Trump, and now some of them are saying they were "just trolling". Has anyone measured how much people fucking with pollsters may be contributing to numbers?
posted by corb at 4:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's nothing that says Trump has to pick a running mate. If he's crazy enough to believe he can win, he's crazy enough to believe the Senate stays red, too, and in that case, who cares? Drama around the VP choice and debates is a nice smoke screen for avoiding the presidential debates.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


It would be pretty baller if vampires were real and one of them could turn RBG. LIFETIME TERM, SUCKERS.

No, because then she would be undead, not alive. At least with traditional vampires.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any.

Hm. A key part of that argument is that it's fine to use violence against Trump and his supporters because the Russian and US military used violence against Hitler and his army.

Self-Godwinning ftw.
posted by dersins at 4:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Clinton campaign released a video

"So let's learn from the wisdom of every mother and father who teaches their daughters there is no limit on how big she can dream and how much she can achieve."

My daughter's four. You're goddam right I'm with her.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


The Clinton campaign released a video: History Made .

Damn. I wish Shirley Chisholm was around to see this. And Ann Richards (and Molly Ivins!). Oh, I wish my grandma was still here. Why did I wear so much mascara today?
posted by sallybrown at 4:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


and now some of them are saying they were "just trolling".

Too bad Paul Ryan can't use this one.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


That "Sorry Liberals" is just another example of the general awfulness of the HuffPo. I wonder how many places that PAY for content rejected that before he gave it to the one that provides "exposure".
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


corb: “Has anyone measured how much people fucking with pollsters may be contributing to numbers?”

Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight argues based on primary results that Trump Supporters Probably Aren’t Lying To Pollsters.
posted by mbrubeck at 4:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


"I think you'll find that it's not really concern for Europe that is causing the US government to spend the giant amounts of money it currently does on its military. Frankly, the US has the largest defense system than every other country in the world combined. Europe's safety is not going to be threatened if the US demilitarizes a little bit - however it does threaten the large profits the military-industrial complex is currently raking in. I think you'll also find that the rest of the world thinks of the US's role in the world as a bit different than "ensuring world peace.""
The rest of the world can feel secure thinking whatever the fuck it wants to think about the US's role in ensuring world peace because it currently doesn't have to divine an alternative, Trump would change that, which would change everything. This is The 2015 National Military Strategy of the United States If NATO really did have zero reason to exist, and American military commitments to the protection of Europe from Russian aggression really were an anachronism of a previous era, it could look very different and put the United States in a position of wielding a hell of a lot more influence relevant to both American interests and 'American interests' over the developing world. The US can't even get European nations to fulfill the commitments they agreed to when they signed up to NATO, and needs to expend political capital just to get Europeans to even pretend to defend themselves. Everything that NATO is drains American influence - unless you take the Russian alternative to NATO seriously.

For better or worse, a Europe that doesn't need to bow to Russian aggression and an Asia that doesn't need to bow to Chinese aggression is still the central purpose of the US military and it is still tooled in large part to deter it rather than harass developing countries towards freedom/'freedom' or use that wealth for better purposes.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Interestingly, Trump also says he does "not intend to comment on this matter any further." Are we taking bets on how long that promise will last?

Trump Orders Surrogates to Intensify Criticism of Judge and Journalists
posted by zakur at 4:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Blasdelb, I'm not denying that the U.S. is propping up NATO or limiting Russian/Chinese influence. I'm just saying that could be accomplished using a much smaller defense budget than it currently funds, leaving more room for healthcare and education and all that good stuff.
posted by peacheater at 4:24 PM on June 7, 2016


Alan Rappeport at The New York Times: “Donald Trump Says His Remarks on Judge Were ‘Misconstrued’”
posted by Going To Maine at 4:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I let my 3 year old press the Hillary checkbox this morning in NJ.

Democratic voter fraud, as usual.
posted by bongo_x at 4:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [40 favorites]


Jesse Benn seems to romatacize violence and revolution. These are tools of last resort, not ones that Ameicans need to turn to today.
posted by humanfont at 4:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


This male/female breakdown of campaign donor demographics is pretty interesting:

nearly 79% of Trump's donors are male
nearly 63% of Sanders' donors are male
nearly 48% of Clinton's donors are male
posted by pocketfullofrye at 4:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]




I'm starting to feel bad for Reince Priebus. It'll be his job to tell Trump yet again "We'd, um, appreciate it if you, um, could, um, try using different words maybe?" after every blatantly offensive thing he says and Trump will say "Yeah yeah..." and then do whatever he wants. I can't help but think of Toby on The Office trying to maintain a business environment while Michael Scott moves forward with that day's crazy idea. The guy can't do anything to him and Trump knows.
posted by downtohisturtles at 4:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


I'm pretty sure I saw another real estate developing family try a similar scheme. It was the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together, or something like that.
posted by zachlipton at 4:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


My sympathy goes out to Donald Trump Jr.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


BTW, in New Jersey, if you don't register with a specific party before the primaries, registered voters are able to to pick a party on the spot when they sign in with the poll workers. I didn't know this before since I am a recent NJ resident, but I learned that when you do this, you end up being enrolled with that party from that point forward.

So at my polling place today, people came to vote and were upset to find that, since they'd said they were Republicans at a previous election, the only presidential candidate they can vote for today is Trump. Some didn't even know they were registered Republicans because they didn't know that happened when they told the poll worker they were Republican last time. They went into the booth and tried to vote for Democrats, and the booth wouldn't let them.

Overheard quotes: "I don't want to vote for a lunatic" and "I'm not voting for a maniac."
posted by wondermouse at 4:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


I'm pretty sure I saw another real estate developing family try a similar scheme. It was the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together, or something like that.

I could see Donald Trump admitting to "light racism."
posted by AndrewInDC at 4:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is such an interesting election, I was sure that a nomination for Hillary would lead to an automatic win for a traditionally-moderate-but-suddenly-ultraconservative Republican candidate. I thought that there's just been too much anti-Hillary conditioning over the last two decades, I couldn't think of a candidate who'd come out of the gate disliked by so many Republican and no small amount of Democrats. But there were so many of those former-moderate (and some less-so) Republicans sniping at each other that Trump stuck out more than he already would have as a d-list celebrity blowhard and blew them all out of the water. I think Hillary will beat Trump. I hope Hillary will beat Trump badly.

The thing is, I don't think many people would have been open to hearing Bernie's message if it wasn't between him, Hillary, and a total milquetoast who was gone quickly. If Joe Biden was running, as so many hoped, I'm sure a lot of these diehard Sanders supporters would have said "let's play it safe". I don't think Bernie's gruff dishevelment would seem as charming next to Smilin' Biden's well coiffed but utterly mainstream charming charm. But they didn't have him, they had someone who they already hated,and the first Democratic Socialist they'd ever listened to, and they liked what he was selling.

I'm not a fan of Clinton's, for policy reasons I won't go into, but Sanders' campaign pulled her campaign left where I think she otherwise would have gone further right of center. And because she's had to fight so hard, even with the DNC seemingly backing her hard, it feels less like a coronation or a dynasty than it would have. She earned it.

Best possible scenario for such a weird set of candidates and circumstances, for me and my left of left of center political leanings, IMHO.
posted by elr at 4:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


This is all very personal and doesn't necessarily say much about the primary season as a whole, but I'm sorta bummed today. It is historic that Clinton will be nominated, and I want to feel good right now. But I look at Facebook and I see posts about not letting the media bamboozle voters into not voting (AP), or posts that speak of voting for Clinton even though she's really really awful and corrupt, with right-wing conspiracy responses going unchecked.

And I think about how I fear sharing my support for Clinton because I'm not prepared to deal with the criticism and shitty discourse. And I want to not feel like that but I'm not sure how, at least right now.

I'm feeling fatigue. I know this all says more about me than anything else. But in a primary where the rhetoric has been so overblown, and where things have only gotten more divisive after it was mathematically sound to presume Clinton as the nominee, I find it hard to express myself and have these conversations.

I truly hope Sanders does the right thing and throws behind Clinton 100%, with specifics as to why he does. I think it will go a long way, for both his and Clinton's supporters.

(Note: I would have happily supported and voted for Sanders if he recieved the nomination. I am a bit upset about the turn his campaign took later on, though.)
posted by defenestration at 4:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


This is all very personal and doesn't necessarily say much about the primary season as a whole, but I'm sorta bummed today. It is historic that Clinton will be nominated, and I want to feel good right now. But I look at Facebook and I see posts about not letting the media bamboozle voters into not voting (AP), or posts that speak of voting for Clinton even though she's really really awful and corrupt, with right-wing conspiracy responses going unchecked.

My very thin silver lining is - yeah I might get paid less and disrespected more, might not get justice or certain jobs or the same accolades as a man, and might have to listen to a lot of undeserved sexist crap about Clinton, but - lots of those people will never get to feel what I am feeling right now, at finally seeing a woman major party Presidential nominee. This is such a big feeling.
posted by sallybrown at 4:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


"On climate, Trump promises to let the world burn" is the Think Progress headline on my twitter feed. It can't get much worse, can it?

"On spiders, Trump promises to let them crawl all over you"
"On despair, Trump promises to make you believe that you and all you love are damned"
"On drivers who use cell phones en route, Trump promises that they will run you the fuck over"

I mean none of those really have the global heft of the original
posted by angrycat at 4:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


exactly one minute until this thing is ovaaaaah.
posted by Justinian at 4:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I voted for Bernie in my state's primary, but his grouchy unwillingness to concede the nomination despite the fact that Clinton has three million more votes, is winning handily from every angle, and has been the obviously-inevitable winner for months now is really starting to sour me on him. He needs to get behind Clinton or at least get out of the fucking way so that the Democratic party can consolidate and focus its energies on defeating Trump.

Clinton didn't drop out in 2008 until June 7.
posted by Automocar at 5:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


“On climate, Trump promises to let the world burn” is the Think Progress headline on my twitter feed. It can't get much worse, can it?

It’s Think Progress. If they can’t come up with a new way to panic you about the right, they aren’t doing their job.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:00 PM on June 7, 2016


California folks are still voting. I mean may as well say it's over at 8PM west coast time. :)
posted by R343L at 5:01 PM on June 7, 2016


Clinton didn't drop out in 2008 until June 7.

But... that's today. I always said he should get behind Clinton after California...
posted by Justinian at 5:02 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


in 2008, June 7th was Saturday, four days after the California primary. Bernie has 3 days to be more gracious than Hillary was.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Clinton didn't drop out in 2008 until June 7.

Clinton was also only 100 delegates behind (300 counting superdelegates), and was actually ahead in the total number of votes.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Mod note: Complaints about moderation do not belong in-thread and you all know that. Please read the prior mod notes for this thread and try to respect your mods and fellow mefites who are participating in good faith.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


Mod note: Also at this point I can RECITE when Clinton dropped out in 2008 and what the relevant numbers were and if we retread it one more time my head may explode, consider it covered ground.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [36 favorites]


Hey does anyone know if there's a way to turn off the absolutely fucking infuriating scissorlift animation on the Guardian's election results page?
posted by dersins at 5:09 PM on June 7, 2016


(I might hate that animation even more than I hate The Intercept_ 's stupid fucking underscore.)
posted by dersins at 5:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


maybe we should all pledge a dollar to the mod bourbon fund for every comment we've had deleted in a primary thread
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


Is there a way to turn off the stupid scissorlift animations? It was cute the first 8,347 times, but I'm kinda over it now.
posted by dersins at 4:36 PM on May 17


Dear God... We've been stuck in this election so long even the tech questions are repeating.
posted by downtohisturtles at 5:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Time is a flat circle, never have I been more sure of it than in these election threads.
posted by yasaman at 5:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hey does anyone know if there's a way to turn off the absolutely fucking infuriating scissorlift animation

Quarter circle back. The transformation mode is ALWAYS a quarter circle back.
posted by happyroach at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016


Support a progressive challenger to Clinton in 2020

Seems like it would be pretty weird to primary the incumbent President. Isn't that what happened in 1980 and made superdelegates a thing in the first place?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sanders is currently in Silverlake. I guess he really does know who his base is.
posted by Justinian at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I haven't spent enough time with the Grauniad's results page to know if there's anything particularly unique to their content that's keeping people there, but if you're just looking for results as they roll in without the stupid animations, the NYT has a nice non-animated page [which doesn't seem to be pay-walled at all, at least in the US].
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Dear God... We've been stuck in this election so long even the tech questions are repeating.

IF SOMEONE WOULD ONLY ANSWER ME I COULD STOP ASKING

Also, what are you, tracking me across political threads? Should I be worried? Flattered? Indifferent?
posted by dersins at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016


Already see the "yeah but there are better women" contingent coming out on the Facebooks (all men, on mine). I miss the days when parents and coworkers and such weren't on Facebook and I could just say "Can you just shut the fuck up for like...12 hours, for once?"
posted by sallybrown at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


maybe we should all pledge a dollar to the mod bourbon fund for every comment we've had deleted in a primary thread

The site isn't going to run very well if all the mods are in the hospital being treated for alcohol poisoning.
posted by jeather at 5:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


sallybrown: filters!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Odd result of WA's ridiculous caucus system: because I had to file an absentee affidavit rather than showing up in person, I have actual evidence of having supported Hillary Clinton during the primary.

All my other votes just went off into some box somewhere. This one is scanned into my computer for posterity.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 5:20 PM on June 7, 2016


Seems like it would be pretty weird to primary the incumbent President. Isn't that what happened in 1980 and made superdelegates a thing in the first place?

Plot twist: Bernie runs as a Republican!
posted by Talez at 5:22 PM on June 7, 2016


As dumb as CNN is, racist shithead Jeffery Lord is getting thrashed by literally two full tables of pundits on CNN right now and it's really fun.
posted by qnarf at 5:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Trump only has 6 flags behind his podium tonight. That's 13 flags less than Clinton used. It follows that Clinton is 13 flags better.
posted by Justinian at 5:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Six Flags Over Bigotry, then?
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Trump will be using a teleprompter tonight, which he almost never does. He knows he has to get on point, quickly.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Guaranteed to make you sick to your stomach!
posted by nicepersonality at 5:36 PM on June 7, 2016


roomthreeseventeen, Trump only uses the best telepromters [sic].
posted by stolyarova at 5:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Trump will be using a teleprompter tonight

lol. Mere days after mocking Clinton for using one? The late night jokes and tweets write themselves.
posted by yasaman at 5:38 PM on June 7, 2016


wasn't his only response to HRC's foreign policy speech the effective rebuttal, "she used a teleprompter" spelled weirdly, or am I misremembering
posted by angrycat at 5:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


MSNBC reporting that Sanders will go to Vermont, and then from there to campaign in Washington, D.C. for their primary.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:39 PM on June 7, 2016


yaas yasaman
posted by angrycat at 5:39 PM on June 7, 2016


You are correct, angrycat.

@realDonaldTrump

In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!

6:13 AM - 3 Jun 2016
posted by stolyarova at 5:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


MSNBC reporting that Sanders will go to Vermont, and then from there to campaign in Washington, D.C. for their primary.

NPR is reporting the same thing.
They're also talking about how Sanders supporters they've talked to in the CA campaign don't care what the numbers are because they don't trust the system.
I'm starting to think it'll take all summer to undo the damage done by the Sanders campaign's constant rhetoric of unfairness and stolen races.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 5:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Funny thing is, if you had told me in 1998 that I'd vote in an election where one of the possibilities before the general was anyone with the word 'socialist' in his description, I would've been over the moon, though if you followed that up with 'And at the end of the general, you're really exited about the possibilities of the intelligence, perseverance, and diligence of ... Hillary Clinton!' I would have thought you were insane.

And yet, here we are - and honestly, I am excited about the presumptive nominee: by all accounts she's hardworking, breathtakingly intelligent and a unabashed policy wonk. She'll also get to nominate two or more justices to the SC, and the primary, while bruising, served to pull her a bit to the left, which is fine by me.

Why all the sturm und drang? We've got a good candidate, we've got a gift of an opponent, and we're coming in from two terms of a beloved (and politically canny) predecessor. We've got the first opportunity in many years to really get the country on the most solidly progressive path since FDR.
posted by eclectist at 5:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [55 favorites]


Nu nee nu nee nu nee nu...what's going on in here everyone? Sorry I'm late, I had the day off and spent it capturing spiders and releasing them into the yard. Boring thread so far? Everyone got a beverage?
posted by vrakatar at 5:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool...as if the way one fell down mattered.
Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Renee Ellmers lost. I remember her doing something exceptionally odious and can't even remember what it was. Compared Obamacare to... something really offensive? Was that it? Anyway, she lost her primary.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:50 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]




I remember her doing something exceptionally odious and can't even remember what it was.

Well whatever it was, now you'll remember her for this.
posted by waitingtoderail at 5:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


My mother tells me that she was interviewed by an Italian news service after she voted. Apparently, they didn't research the politics of Orange County, CA before they arrived, because they hadn't been able to figure out why everyone (er, except my mother) was voting for Trump.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:54 PM on June 7, 2016


Come on New Jersey, try to count faster than Puerto Rico. They had no money and a quarter the polling places they needed. Try to keep up.
posted by Justinian at 5:54 PM on June 7, 2016


So Trump's magic endorsement was meaningless? Hmmm Does not bode well for him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Come on New Jersey, try to count faster than Puerto Rico. They had no money and a quarter the polling places they needed. Try to keep up.

[inserts joke about Fort Lee]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Lifelong Democrat here. I wept over Muskie and voted for Dukakis.

Listen, I like Bernie Sanders, and I have been a union member, and I totally support everything he stands for.

But I have watched, over the years, the utter man-hate thrown at Hillary, both in her role as First Lady and as her career has gone upward, and nothing has stuck. To whit: someone complaining about her outfit. Do MEN ever get that thrown at them? Does Donald Trump, for all of his error of his ways, have anyone question the cost of his outfit?

Come on. It's just like Obama. The racist proles hated the thought of a Black president. And the same people can't stand the thought of a female president.

I was there when Geraldine Ferraro ran for VP and witnessed the sheer hatred at the thought that a woman could hold an office that high. It really affected me as a young woman.

This is politics. A woman might lead the United States. And I say it's about time a woman leads these old boys in Congress. Let Bernie pull her to the left, sure but don't ever kid yourself that she is unqualified due to her gender. I have been waiting for this moment for my entire life, and if you want to shit on her, go ahead but she is going to be the next President of the United States, whether you like it or not.

America: Dragging people into the next century, one election at a time.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 6:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [59 favorites]


Whoa that Renee Ellmer video is something. How did she ever get elected?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:01 PM on June 7, 2016


This is the same party which has nominated Donald J Trump, billionaire to be its standard bearer. Do you really need to ask?
posted by Justinian at 6:03 PM on June 7, 2016




Trump walks out tonight to "We Are the Champions." Because nothing says Trump like Freddie Mercury shouting "no time for losers!"

Now he's thanking people from states where the polls haven't closed yet.
posted by zachlipton at 6:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


NJ just got called for Hillary Clinton. Donald J Trump, billionaire, is simultaneously on stage in front of his puny six flags giving a speech widely expected to focus primarily on hitting back at Clinton after her speech last week.
posted by Justinian at 6:08 PM on June 7, 2016


Republicans know they can't win a legitimate election so purging voter rolls is totes a great strategy for making states they might lose more competitive.

Of course even if they win Ohio (haha) they are going to lose Florida and let's be honest Virginia is quickly becoming a blue state and that's before giving former felons the right to vote again.
posted by vuron at 6:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Trump is reading off his teleprompter and sneaking in his little side comments.
posted by zutalors! at 6:09 PM on June 7, 2016


Trump to Bernie supporters: We welcome you with open arms.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:09 PM on June 7, 2016


Is Trump looking extra orange tonight, or is my TV off?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:10 PM on June 7, 2016


Ivanka doesn't look like a happy camper. It must have been a rough couple of days in Trumpster Fire land.
posted by Justinian at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2016


"To all of those Bernie Sanders folks who have been left out by a rigged system with superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms."

This. Right here. Is how Sanders has been self-defeating these past few weeks.
posted by zachlipton at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


Ivanka looks...worried? Reluctant? They should put the younger daughter behind him, she's all in and super smug.
posted by zutalors! at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah if nothing else I hope to hear Bernie throw that offer back at trump like the toxic crap it is.
posted by chapps at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Is Trump looking extra orange tonight, or is my TV off?"

If your TV is off and you're still seeing Trump, call the police. IT'S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [31 favorites]


TURN HIM OFF. Watch an old movie.
posted by vrakatar at 6:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


If Melania tries she might be able to edge another foot away from Trump.
posted by Justinian at 6:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


In other news, while Trump is talking, this 87 year old man just graduated from college.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


If Melania tries she might be able to edge another foot away from Trump.
'Yeah, she's not even in the whole frame.
posted by zutalors! at 6:15 PM on June 7, 2016


Trump says he's giving a major "everything wrong with the Clintons" speech next week, not that this speech is much different.
posted by zachlipton at 6:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Jeez eyebrows we were thinking the same thing, in a different manner.
posted by vrakatar at 6:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


But we already have a list of All the Terrible Things Hillary Clinton Has Done in print! And it's glorious!

Honestly, the GOP has been trying to prove that Hillary Clinton is a werewolf for literally my entire adult life. They've failed. At this point, even if she really is a werewolf, I'm totally comfortable with it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


Ivanka and Melania both look like hostages, much as Christie did.
posted by carmicha at 6:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Trump says he's giving a major "everything wrong with the Clintons" speech next week

I'm sure Clinton is totally quaking in her fucking boots.
posted by dersins at 6:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Trump says he's giving a major "everything wrong with the Clintons" speech next week, not that this speech is much different.

Hillary needs to do an "Everything Right with the Trumps" speech in response.
Good evening, everyone.

That Melania seems nice, right? And the kids? They seem OK, don't they?

Thank you, good night.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


What is No PPP?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:19 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


And is she 'likeable'? Who the hell cares?

Some recent examples where I thought she was likeable:
Bartender skit on Saturday Night Live
Jimmy Kimmel Mansplains to Hillary Clinton
404 page (can you imagine Trump doing anything self-deprecating?)
posted by kirkaracha at 6:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


His speechwriters don't know how to write for him, these sentences are too long and, uh, crafted to sound believably Trump.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think he meant TPP? But who knows, the teleprompter has not made him more comprehensible
posted by chapps at 6:20 PM on June 7, 2016


At this point, even if she really is a werewolf, I'm totally comfortable with it.

I mean, Oz wasn't so bad.
posted by Salieri at 6:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Is Trump so stupid he doesn't understand the connotations of the phrase "America First" or is he being deliberate?
posted by Justinian at 6:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


He's surely going off the promptly. He just said America was "suffering bigly"
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


"the jobs have been stripped from our country like we're babies"
posted by zutalors! at 6:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


He really sounds like Frank Underwood
posted by zutalors! at 6:22 PM on June 7, 2016


Is Trump so stupid he doesn't understand the connotations of the phrase "America First" or is he being deliberate?

It's... it's hard to say really.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


"America First" is an actual dogwhistle. That's downright subtle for Trump.
posted by zachlipton at 6:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


where are you watching this trainwreck
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:23 PM on June 7, 2016


I am not watching the speech on TV and I honestly can't tell if you guys are quoting Trump or joking around.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Ha Brian Williams also wrote down the babies quote.
posted by zutalors! at 6:24 PM on June 7, 2016


"the jobs have been stripped from our country like we're babies"

TRUMP OPPOSES CHILD LABOR LAWS
posted by tonycpsu at 6:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


No he definitely said "America First" a bunch of times.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016


Okay then, KEEP WATCHING!
posted by vrakatar at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016


I wish I could tell you that we were joking around. I wish I could tell you that. God help us all, I can't.
posted by Justinian at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


No jokes. It just ended. I've been told that Clinton is speaking at 10pm Eastern on a news network near you.
posted by zachlipton at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016


I still want to hear him explain the "save money and number one!" comment. Like, "save... number one" the way Howard Hughes saved number one...?
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Welp, I just got the "tonight we made history" fundraising email from the Clinton campaign. She's owning it.
posted by dersins at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2016


He really shouldn't do this teleprompter and prepared speech thing. (I mean, he should, because I want him to lose, but.) It sucks away all of his creamsicle charisma.
posted by sallybrown at 6:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Next Trump hat message: BRING BACK JOBS FOR BABIES.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


"Bigly" isn't a word though. I'm sure of it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's a perfectly cromulent word.
posted by Justinian at 6:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


I listened to it on my replica Philco radio which is really the best way to hear a nativist demagogue yell about America First
posted by theodolite at 6:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


"Bigly" isn't a word though. I'm sure of it.

But you knew what he meant, right?

THAT'S RIGHT MY NON-PRESCRIPTIVISM EXTENDS EVEN TO FUCKFACE J. TRUMP, THOUSANDAIRE
posted by dersins at 6:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


My Hillary email is telling me it's My Time to Shine because Hillary emails are never not like my mom.
posted by zutalors! at 6:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


A bigly spirit ennoblicates the highmost wall.
posted by 0xFCAF at 6:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


TRUMP/BIGLY 2016
posted by vrakatar at 6:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Can someone clue me in on the significance of the "America First" dogwhistle?
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:31 PM on June 7, 2016


Do not misunderestimate him!
posted by rtha at 6:31 PM on June 7, 2016


After the rightwing cesspool made reading off teleprompter "a thing", they now have a candidate that literally cannot make it through a speech without saying something (a) racist (b) batshit insane (c) unbelievably ignorant of how the government and/or the world economy works or even is (d) or most likely all of the above at once; without reading word for word from a teleprompter speech undoubtedly written by Reince Pribus' staff.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:32 PM on June 7, 2016




Clinton is holding an 8 points lead in South Dakota with 40% in. That's unexpected.

Ipsifendus: America First Party.
posted by Justinian at 6:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hey even werewolf Americans deserve representation too you guys.
posted by emjaybee at 6:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


On a more serious note, I think the most worrying thing in that speech was when he was talking about how the entire political system is rigged and worthless and incapable of ever solving problems. Because that's the classic setup for (a) if he wins, dismantling the constitutional apparatus of the state or (b) if he loses, inciting his followers to reject the results and take matters into their own hands
posted by theodolite at 6:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


What's amazing is that this is the moment where most candidates would lay out an opening statement for the rest of the campaign. This speech consisted of Clinton attacks and vague "I'll never stop fighting for you" statements that would be at home from the 3rd place runner-up in the 4th grade class representative election. As an opening statement, it removes any lingering doubt that there's any sort of an agenda or point from Trump in our future.
posted by zachlipton at 6:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I kind of hope Hillary is a werewolf.


President Lady Werewolf? How awesome would that be?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


According to infuriatingscissorlifts.com, Sanders is leading Clinton by a substantial margin in North Dakota with 27.6% of precincts reporting.

The vote count is currently 71 - 34.

So, not a lot of Democrats in NoDak, I guess.
posted by dersins at 6:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


"We will take care of our African Americans" was another gem
posted by zutalors! at 6:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


classic setup for (a) if he wins, dismantling the constitutional apparatus of the state once he's elected or (b) if he loses, inciting his followers to reject the results and take matters into their own hands

I think it has already been clear that these are both likely outcomes.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:36 PM on June 7, 2016


YOU’RE IN THE BIGLY
WHEN YOU’RE INTO BIGLY CHEW

(For all you Millennials in the crowd: there used to be a brand of bubble gum called “Big League Chew” that came shredded in pouches, just like the chewing tobacco baseball players used. No, really. It was advertised during cartoons and everything.)
posted by nicepersonality at 6:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


What Hillary Imagines:
So I asked for her own pick.

And her answer was: if she could go into the past to tell someone that she’d been nominated for President of the United States, it would be her mother.

Dorothy Rodham had an auspicious date of birth — June 4, 1919, the very same day the Senate passed a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. But otherwise, she had a terrible beginning. Her parents abandoned her. At 8, she was riding across the country, unaccompanied except for her younger sister, on the way to live with grandparents who didn’t want them. She went off on her own at 14, working as a housekeeper during the Depression. But she got herself through high school, was a good student and raised her own daughter to believe the sky was the limit.

Before we head off on the rest of this deeply imperfect election, take a second and enjoy. Imagine Hillary Clinton going back in time. She sits in the train next to a frightened little girl, and delivers the news about what happened this week.
posted by sallybrown at 6:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [134 favorites]


When I hear America First, I think Britain First.
posted by corb at 6:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


(b) if he loses, inciting his followers to reject the results and take matters into their own hands

It's never too early to lay the foundation for your "Stab In the Back" narrative.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:37 PM on June 7, 2016


North Dakota is the only caucus today.
posted by peeedro at 6:37 PM on June 7, 2016


Dammit sallybrown, I thought I was done crying.
posted by cooker girl at 6:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


TRUMP/BIGLY 2016

“A perfectly cromulent campaign”
posted by Going To Maine at 6:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Seriously?!? The mother of the first woman President was born on the day that women got the vote? That's awesome.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [43 favorites]


Yeah and I cried a lot about the 9/11 Golden Retriever Search and Rescue dog already.
posted by zutalors! at 6:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


What Hillary Imagines

Okay, as happy as I am about all this, nothing had gotten me choked up and teary-eyed until I read that. Wow.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]




Nice Personality, you can still get Big League Chew, at least at Economy Candy in Manhattan! Jim Bouton, of Ball Four fame, is part of the company that invented it!
posted by AJaffe at 6:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


According to the Wikipedia, Dorothy Rodham's little sister, Isabelle Howell, is still alive.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


That gum I like has come back in style!
posted by nicepersonality at 6:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Seriously?!? The mother of the first woman President was born on the day that women got the vote? That's awesome.

I LOVE goosebump-y historical coincidences like this.

my favorite: there's a portrait of a big group of Atlantans dressed up in period costumes who performed for the world premiere of Gone With the Wind in 1939. one part of this group were young boys from the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir dressed up as enslaved children. one of the children in the picture was Martin Luther King, Jr.
posted by sallybrown at 6:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


If you do get Big League Chew grape flavor is best.

-Sincerely, 8-year-old Me
posted by emjaybee at 6:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


ew grape.
posted by vrakatar at 6:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Apparently Clinton is winning the Democratic popular vote by a wider margin than any candidate since 1980.

Obviously not all the votes are in, so who knows if that will hold -- just an interesting counter to the prevailing "unpopular" narrative.

(Also bear in mind that many millions of votes are yet to come in comparing Democratic voter turnout this year to previous years)
posted by pocketfullofrye at 6:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


"We will take care of our African Americans" was another gem

Wait like in what sense of the expression "take care of"?
posted by Sara C. at 6:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


I wasn't tracking you dersins. Just making a dumb joke. I remembered people talking about that in one of the previous threads and was greatly amused to find out it was the same person.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:51 PM on June 7, 2016


For all you Millennials in the crowd: there used to be a brand of bubble gum called “Big League Chew” that came shredded in pouches, just like the chewing tobacco baseball players used. No, really. It was advertised during cartoons and everything.

They still have this! I saw it at the dollar store the other day.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Better yet, what sense of "our"?
posted by GhostintheMachine at 6:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


My mom would never let me have that gum and I didn't get why because I was so sheltered from tobacco products I didn't even know chewing tobacco existed.
posted by Sara C. at 6:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Clinton is winning the Democratic popular vote by a wider margin than any candidate since 1980.

Per the graph in that tweet, 1992 and 1988 were also won by wider margins.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:53 PM on June 7, 2016


Ready
posted by cashman at 6:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Wait like in what sense of the expression 'take care of'?

"Take care of?"
posted by kirkaracha at 6:54 PM on June 7, 2016


I believe they're adding Brown and Tsongas together for 1992, and Clinton's lead will be bigger than 1988 after tonight.
posted by Justinian at 6:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I never watch cable news, and here I am glued to the TV flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC waiting for Clinton to appear. This is history, people!

also I now want some Big League Chew even though it inevitably loses its taste after like five minutes and you keep stuffing more and more into your mouth until you're trying to chew the entire bag at once
posted by Salieri at 6:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


ccan someone please tell me where a Canadian with no TV can watch Clinton fire it up
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:57 PM on June 7, 2016


I appear to have touched a nerve so is this the wrong time to admit I preferred Bubble Tape?
posted by nicepersonality at 6:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I am a millennial and remember seeing Big League Chew at the grocery checkout lanes and begging my mom to get me one... fucker was two dollars in 1993!!! THAT WAS EXPENSIVE, MY CHILD!!!
posted by lineofsight at 6:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


also I now want some Big League Chew even though it inevitably loses its taste after like five minutes and you keep stuffing more and more into your mouth until you're trying to chew the entire bag at once

is there another way to eat it?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


ccan someone please tell me where a Canadian with no TV can watch Clinton fire it up

Try this!
posted by Salieri at 6:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ugh, I can still taste Bubble Tape if I close my eyes.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I know I'd have to stay up till dawn to see this, but I'd love to see a breakdown of all the voting in California tonight, sliced every possible way. Totals on both sides and then for all the demographics. That will be the tea leaves to read.
posted by vrakatar at 7:00 PM on June 7, 2016


Thanks Salieri! Protip: TURN OFF THE CHAT
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Only three flags for Clinton tonight, but they are SUPER BIG.
posted by Justinian at 7:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm surprisingly excited for Clinton's speech. This is, as our VP would say, a big fucking deal, and the contrast between what we just heard from Trump and what I can only imagine is about to happen will make it that much sweeter.
posted by zachlipton at 7:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


did u kno

if you are trying to make a candy pizza and you put big league chew on top like shredded cheese you will start a fire in the toaster oven and be sent to bed in disgrace
posted by poffin boffin at 7:02 PM on June 7, 2016 [72 favorites]


BUBBLE TAPE NO!
VOTE BAZOOKA JOE!
posted by vrakatar at 7:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I love that the music rn is a woman singing "we can be heroes!"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


#NeverDubbleBubble
posted by sporkwort at 7:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


i think you can start a fire in a toaster oven just by looking at it sideways.
posted by zutalors! at 7:05 PM on June 7, 2016


(I bought Bazooka Joe for the comics, but real talk: that gum was Ter. Rib. Ble. Worse than the gum you’d get with your Halloween candy. Possibly even worse than the gum that came in the packs of Garbage Pail Kids.)
posted by nicepersonality at 7:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


OMG, Bazooka Joe is the worst. BONKERS 4 LIFE.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Fruit Stripe!
posted by AJaffe at 7:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


My family's doctor as a kid always gave me a piece of Bazooka Joe at the end of the checkup. I'm pretty sure it was the same bag of gum he pulled them out of for the entire 18 years.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was never angrier as a child than when someone asked me if I wanted candy and when I said yes, handed me gum.

Burn all gum.
posted by sallybrown at 7:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


HRC is still up 6 in South Dakota with 67% in. That would be crushing for Sanders. Not mathematically obviously but if he can't even win in South Dakota?
posted by Justinian at 7:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I used to actually chew the gum that came with baseball cards.
posted by waitingtoderail at 7:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


yeah, gum is stupid. Cigarettes however...
posted by vrakatar at 7:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Okay enough gum nostalgia.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


aww but mom
posted by poffin boffin at 7:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


But Mooooooommmmm, waiting is SO HARD!
posted by cooker girl at 7:13 PM on June 7, 2016


Both James Carville and Hugh Hewitt said tonight on MSNBC that they still think there could be a non-Trump GOP nominee.
posted by sallybrown at 7:13 PM on June 7, 2016


Let's be honest Eyebrows McGee. The gum thing is so much better than "Your candidate sucks and you suck for supporting a sucky candidate who sucks" for the 1000th time.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


Protip: TURN OFF THE CHAT
seconded
posted by Golem XIV at 7:14 PM on June 7, 2016


I just attended the launch party for Pat McCarthy for the Washington State Auditor. The current office holder is under indictment. She's the only candidate of five (the rest are men) whose actually been an auditor. It's a down ballot race of course and no one "cares" about them except when governance sucks. So I was pretty jazzed to hear former Governor Christine Gregoire and Rep. Judy Clibborn give their endorsements. It's a good year for highly competent women.
posted by R343L at 7:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Just fyi, the youtube stream is about 30-45 seconds behind live.
posted by cashman at 7:15 PM on June 7, 2016


(here we go)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]




watching the livestream, they're running the History video released earlier today. the crowd is going bonkers. i've got chills.
posted by palomar at 7:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Sara Bareilles? Noooooooooo.
posted by Justinian at 7:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


My 16-year-old daughter burst into tears during the History video.
posted by cooker girl at 7:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


I'm thinking back on the back-and-forth in the previous election thread (or was it the one before?) about how a lot of Clinton supporters refrained from speaking out on Facebook because of the backlash they'd received, or at least the backlash they feared they'd receive.

Anyway, I'm thinking about it because my entire Facebook feed is suddenly filled with people going fucking nuts with happy about Hillary Clinton's assured path to the nomination. It's really nice.
posted by duffell at 7:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [27 favorites]


I seem to be having similar allergy problems right now that normally only hit me during the second at of Hamilton.
posted by zachlipton at 7:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


OMG BILL
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:23 PM on June 7, 2016


Pleaaaaaase end this as the campaign song pleasssseeeeee
posted by sallybrown at 7:23 PM on June 7, 2016


Wow. Never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. First a black man now a woman?!
As a black woman, I have no words!
posted by ramix at 7:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [36 favorites]


I am fully crying, you guys.
posted by triggerfinger at 7:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Man, I'm this emotional now. When she wins the fucking presidency I'm going to lose it. Happysob.
posted by lydhre at 7:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


the sheer JOY on her face
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I've been afraid I wouldn't see this in my lifetime. Long time coming.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


As a black woman, I have no words!

You're next.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


My 19-year-old son: "I think it's great that Democrats keep making history while Republicans keep nominating white men."
posted by cooker girl at 7:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


Y'all, I can't explain my tears except to say that in all the years since she's died, I've never missed my mother more than I do right this second.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


OMG glass ceiling mention. I'm going to have red eyes by the time I go to bed.
posted by Salieri at 7:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh God, the live comment thread on Youtube.
posted by waitingtoderail at 7:26 PM on June 7, 2016


Brooklyn represent.
posted by vrakatar at 7:26 PM on June 7, 2016


I don't cry. Except right now.

Wow.
posted by bearwife at 7:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


HA HA EVERY TIME SHE SAYS "WOMEN AND MEN" WITH WOMEN FIRST IT GIVES ME FUCKING LIFE
posted by poffin boffin at 7:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [61 favorites]


My mom still claims she hates Hillary and she is still going nuts with joy right now. These feelings are so complex.
posted by sallybrown at 7:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


Her sheer joy when she came out on that stage, it's hard not to connect with that.
posted by zutalors! at 7:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


Very nice congratulation of Sanders, with vigorous cheering from the crowd.
posted by Salieri at 7:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


MADAM FUCKING PRESIDENT
posted by lydhre at 7:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


I wasn't going to break out champagne because it's a school night, yet here we are.
posted by zutalors! at 7:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


ok i guess this makes up for costa rica losing so gruesomely tonight to the us
posted by poffin boffin at 7:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"As your president, I will always have your back."

HELL FUCKING YES. I believe it.
posted by yasaman at 7:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


"I hear you... And as your President I will always have your back."

sob
posted by bearwife at 7:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


This history nerd is BEAMING at the Seneca Falls reference. I'm sitting at a restaurant eating pizza and crying.
posted by mynameisluka at 7:31 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


remember what unites us: WE ALL HATE DONALD TRUMP
posted by poffin boffin at 7:31 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


Anyone catch what that person was shouting?
posted by dumbland at 7:31 PM on June 7, 2016


"Bridges are better than walls" is a good slogan. Let's do that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:31 PM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


Could anyone tell what that heckler said?
posted by stolyarova at 7:32 PM on June 7, 2016


Bridges are better than walls.

motherfucking BOOM
posted by cooker girl at 7:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


"Bridges are better than walls."

HELL FUCKING YES. MADAM PRESIDENT.
posted by Salieri at 7:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


bridges better than walls. Simple and elegant.
posted by vrakatar at 7:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh boy. She's going for it now.
posted by Jalliah at 7:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


TESTIFY.
posted by vrakatar at 7:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Ohhhhhhhh, I'm here for this. Yes I am. Tear it up, Madam Prez.
posted by palomar at 7:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh the rage behind her eyes....I cannot wait for her to eviscerate Trump in a debate.
posted by cooker girl at 7:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


She's pulling no punches. Just calling out everything on Trump. I've been a Hillary supporter this whole cycle. This makes me enthusiastic.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 7:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Oh, it is on. It is so very on. It may not be possible for it to be more on.
posted by mhum at 7:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Congratulations America, this is how to be great.
posted by valetta at 7:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


I see a brave well armed Knight on a white steed with a long sharp well honed lance. She's awesome.
posted by bearwife at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


"To be great, we cannot be small."

Nice subtle dig at Trump's hands, there.
posted by duffell at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


I'm still dreaming of Clinton kicking off her first debate with Trump by skipping the intro, turning straight to him, and saying with narrowed eyes, "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me."
posted by scaryblackdeath at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [36 favorites]


*salutes*


GOD SAVE PRESIDENT LADY WEREWOLF!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [20 favorites]


A Sanders concession and Obama endorsement tomorrow would be a very good follow up.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Prez nominees 1789-2016
🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶🚶💃
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [66 favorites]


You can really tell how much she means this. Like, the fact of Trump and what he represents for the country repels her on a visceral level.

This is awesome.
posted by Salieri at 7:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [22 favorites]


omgilovehersomuch
posted by chaoticgood at 7:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Book plug!

But yeah, she's totally nailing this speech. Finally! This is the candidate I've wanted all cycle.
posted by The Bellman at 7:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Give Bernie 24-48. And she should wrap it up now. oh hell yeah bully reference.
posted by vrakatar at 7:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh that tribute to her mom. And her amazing birthdate.
posted by bearwife at 7:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Folks, I'm on a tenuous mobile data connection and I can't watch the video and I just want you to know how much y'all are KILLING ME HORRIBLY RIGHT NOW
posted by saturday_morning at 7:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


Canadian here who has been actively only paying cursory attention to the election so far. (enough to know in general what's going on but not watching too much or reading the threads here).

Have her speeches been like this through her campaign or is this Hilary kicking it up a notch? This is pretty awesome.
posted by Jalliah at 7:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


God I really wish she would win all 50 states. Just roast Donald like the pig he is.
posted by sallybrown at 7:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


Jalliah, this is new and more pointed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Hillary please bring the senate to DC with you
posted by madamjujujive at 7:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think her speeches this campaign have always been awesome. And she ALWAYS mentions women.
posted by zutalors! at 7:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I love that she's up there on her own in the middle of the crowd. No family, no aides, no flag backdrop. Just her and her supporters.
posted by zachlipton at 7:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


Coincidentally, I had this open in another tab: "The L.A. 'village' that raised Hillary Clinton's mother", an article from the LA Times in 2008 detailing part of Hillary Clinton's mom's early life. Spoiler alert: it was pretty rough. I can't believe she's been in the public eye as long as she has without this part of her biography being more well-known.
posted by mhum at 7:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I also love how much Chelsea clearly adores her mom.
posted by zutalors! at 7:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Is it me, or is Brian Williams kind of a dick?
posted by The Bellman at 7:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


GREAT SPEECH. And now my Bear and I are both in tears.

Thrilled to have lived to see this.
posted by bearwife at 7:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


anyway back to the football
posted by poffin boffin at 7:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


HillaryRubbingHerHandsWithGlee.gif!!!
posted by acidic at 7:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


holy shit

holy a million shits

She is like a bajillion percent on the warpath and I almost feel sorry for Trump. He has no idea how thoroughly he is going to be eviscerated.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:45 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


What specific thing has Brian Williams said?
posted by zachlipton at 7:46 PM on June 7, 2016


"Jumped out like a cougar! Jumped out like wow!" Chris Matthews

(I do love his bizarre characterizations sometimes.)
posted by sallybrown at 7:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also Chris Matthews just called HRC a cougar. Really Chris? Really? Come on, guys. Just give Rachel the network and get the hell off the air.
posted by The Bellman at 7:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


"...It is always good to practice situational awareness around AP bureaus and offices." — AP reminds employees to be vigilant after backlash from Sanders supporters.

I won't be answering calls from unknown numbers today, after third call from Bernie supporters telling me they'd hunt me down in the streets.Amy Chozick, NYT
posted by My Dad at 7:47 PM on June 7, 2016


She should co-opt the soundbite of Reagan saying "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL" and pair it with the footage of the actual wall coming down. The Berlin Wall. For a tv spot. Help me flesh that out. Lets get the last of the moderate republicans on board.
posted by vrakatar at 7:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


holy shit

holy a million shits

She is like a bajillion percent on the warpath and I almost feel sorry for Trump. He has no idea how thoroughly he is going to be eviscerated.


My thoughts too. Mouth actually dropped open. Freaked me out in a good way.
posted by Jalliah at 7:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think Matthews was calling the comment "Cougar." Not Hillary. But yeah they can give the network to Maddow, as long as they keep Chris Hayes.
posted by zutalors! at 7:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


How fun is it gonna be to watch her be so competent against him for the next few months?
posted by glhaynes at 7:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Per the graph in that tweet, 1992 and 1988 were also won by wider margins.


Ah I mis-worded that. She has a higher percentage of the Democratic popular vote than any candidate since 1980 (caveats about not all votes being in, of course, still apply).
posted by pocketfullofrye at 7:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cried the whole time. So excited!!
posted by SarahElizaP at 7:49 PM on June 7, 2016


Hey, by the way, thank you New Jersey.
posted by zutalors! at 7:49 PM on June 7, 2016


I've been a Bernie supporter throughout the primaries - all the way up until this speech tonight. Now I'm all in for Hillary. That was incredibly inspiring.
posted by MsVader at 7:50 PM on June 7, 2016 [39 favorites]


I'm thrilled that my grandmother is alive to see this. I'm thrilled that my niece who turns six tomorrow and has big goals of ruling the world may not ever think that she can't be president because girls can't be in charge.

I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to the debates. My liver is apprehensive, but my heart sings a warrior's song. I may have already been into the wine. Tra la la, it's a good day to be alive.
posted by palomar at 7:50 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


What specific thing has Brian Williams said?

Nothing specific, he's just felt really grudging about this all night. Complaining about the HRC lead-in film, sniping about the crowd, etc. I don't have much exposure to him, and I may well be projecting, but he just doesn't feel appropriately on board with the history of the moment, given that he's an MSNBC anchor. It's probably just me.
posted by The Bellman at 7:51 PM on June 7, 2016


We only could tune in at the end. Running the live stream back.

(Also side note: those poor folks in the bleechers behind the stage waving flags for hours.)
posted by R343L at 7:51 PM on June 7, 2016


I'm also a huge Bernie supporter who has serious issues with Clinton's foreign policy ideas, but whatever, choo choo, I'm on board. Let's go.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [53 favorites]


There is no way in hell that Trump can hold a stage like Hillary can. He's an incompetent buffoon.
posted by yesster at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Brian Williams is probably depressed that he's still stuck in purgatory atoning for his sins on MSNBC.
posted by Justinian at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


The people united shall never be defeated.
posted by vrakatar at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Can I get Choo Choo on a t shirt
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


I loved that so much. I loved how she reached out to all of America - Sanders supporters, Republicans, Independents - with a clear challenge of "we are stronger together and we can be better than this".

That was exactly the right tone to take. There's a wonderful sense of optimism there - yes, standing against Trump and the way he wants to drag the country backward, but clearly signaling a moving *forward* as well. Like, you're of the past, Donald. We're going into our future without you and won't let you get in the way, so stand aside.
posted by Salieri at 7:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


What a beautiful goddamn speech! Suck on that Trump-- she has the best words and you sir are a LOSER.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Tested up reading Little Engine That Could book to my daughter tonight is why
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think after his appearances on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Brian Williams got it into his head that he is funny, and it hasn't really served him well since.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Can I get Choo Choo, Motherfucker on a t shirt? Can the back say Chugga Chugga Up Yours?
posted by palomar at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Hey guys I made a silly gif of Hillary talking to the entire GOP field.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


It was great to vote for Bernie today, not only because it's exciting to have a candidate with the word "socialist" proudly attached to him, but also because my vote felt like direct support for the hard work put in by the people I know who helped make the campaign happen. Plenty of stuff went wrong, but it means a lot to me to know that I got to vote the way I did today.

There's a lot of anxiety these days about what's going to happen to everyone's jobs. We all knew this day would come, but there's still a lot of readjusting to do.

But! Now my primary vote is cast, and I'm excited to vote for Hillary in the general, because if we're going to be making history with our president, we can certainly do much worse than her.
posted by teponaztli at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [23 favorites]


can i 100% seriously suggest we just forgo white dudes as president for the next 240 years?
posted by beerperson at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [33 favorites]


The only question is where to put all these Love Trumps Hate stickers I've accumulated.
posted by palindromic at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2016


Excellent comments from Sen. Klobuchar.. And what a giant smile.
posted by bearwife at 7:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Reference: here's the full Declaration of Sentiments Clinton referenced. Amazing to think of what these women were fighting for...and sobering to realize that only one of the signers lived to see women get the vote. http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html
posted by mynameisluka at 7:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I am thinking of my Mom too and wishing she could have been here to see this. My Mom was a diehard democrat. It was one of her lifelong identity markers. For years I was an independent but Bush/Cheney changed that. Now I am so proud to be aligned with a party that breaks ground for a black president, a woman. Just wow.
Her excerpts from the pledge of allegiance - nice touch; been a long time since those words sounded so real to me.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


ugh three more minutes until CA results start coming in
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


My great grandmother came here, by herself, when she was about 15, from Austria. She lost the rest of her family in a concentration camp, and made her own way here, learned English, and created a new life for herself. I think she'd have been excited tonight as well.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


A socialist is going to win one of the biggest states in the US by like 25% and then concede. Interesting times.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:59 PM on June 7, 2016


The beautiful thing about that speech is that it combined its two main themes:
  • The history-making nature of tonight as yet another step toward equality and inclusion
  • The anti-Trump message that we're stronger together and bridges are better than walls
into a single unified message. She, and I mean this in the most supportive way, didn't merely play the woman card; she slapped it down so hard she broke the card table. And it worked because the takeaway wasn't "vote for me because I'm a woman," but rather "vote for me because I will continue the centuries-long effort of progress through which this country has strived to better itself while my opponent wants to do precisely the opposite."
posted by zachlipton at 7:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [43 favorites]


Perfectly timed, my issue of MAD Magazine arrived today. (Yes I subscribe; 1/3 the newsstand price and I'd rather let my mail-carrier see me with it than a supermarket checker)

And it is a festival of Trump ridicule, starting with this on the cover (only substituting "ANOTHER BRAINLESS ISSUE OF MAD" at the top.

In its "Fundalini Pages" collection of quarter-page shorties the only Trump mention in the first 3 pages is in "Unabridged Signs That Tell It Like It Is" that included "HELP WANTED (Donald Trump scared off our Mexican workers)". But then it had "The TRUMPalini Pages" with goodies previously on MAD's website: "WHINE ENTHUSIAST" (slightly altered from "Whine Spectator"), "Donald Trump Recalls Other Tragedies (besides "7/11")", "The Startling Similarities and Differences Between Donald Trump and Burger King’s New “Angriest Whopper”" and "The First Sign of Spring" (robin builds nest in Donald's 'hair'), plus a full-page (frame your own) Trump University Diploma (which is, IMO, devastatingly perfect).

The 8-page parody of Batman V Superman ("Battyman V Stuporman: Dumb and Joyless") ends with evil billionaire Lax Truther replaced as his evil corporation's evil CEO by (you guessed it) Donald Trump (and not with a parody-version of his name).

Then there's a three-page "Donald Trump Vs. the Bible", contrasting REAL Bible quotes with REAL Trump quotes: "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" - Luke 14:13; "I don't like losers" - Donald 7/18/2015 (Writer Desmond Devlin probably did more serious research than any MAD writer in YEARS)

Hillary Clinton does appear on the back cover WITH the Donald in a "MAD movie poster" for "CLINTON - TRUMP: UNCIVIL WAR" (both using photos that show off wrinkles). No sign of Bernie (even though he'd appeared a couple times recently on the website, as "Angry Bern" and "Deadpol", just too late for this issue).

I suspect that MAD has no particular fear about upsetting subscribers who are Trump supporters... in fact, I look forward to seeing them highlight the letters from the two who can write in the next issue's Letters & Tomatoes page.

I recommend this issue, not just for the ample Trump abuse, but also for the piece comparing America's Civil War to Captain America: Civil War (Robert E. Lee vs. Stan Lee) (guess they didn't have room for two full superhero parodies in one issue, with all that Trump), The Official Stormtrooper Recruitment Pamphlet (what? No StormTrumper reference? Nope.), a very elaborate center-spread by very elaborate illustrator Tom Bunk and a one-page comic by the Always Controversial Ted Rall (who let HIM in?).
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


My grandma was born before women won the right to vote. She couldn't stay up late enough to watch Hillary's speech tonight, but I'll show her tomorrow and probably cry all over again.
posted by Akhu at 8:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Get Corey Booker on the phone. He's a certified hero and a solidly electable choice, and you can't teach that.
posted by vrakatar at 8:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm dying to know what my 94 year old grandmother, a lifelong communist, thinks of all this.
posted by teponaztli at 8:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have to admit that, even though I voted Bernie in the primary, I've been looking forward to seeing how Clinton handles Trump. As her callbacks to feminist triumphs and challenges in her speech remind us, Clinton is a woman who grew up, came of age, and built her career in an era were even the most marginal of progress of gender equality was hard fought. I have no doubt that at some point in her life, someone has asked Clinton to fetch coffee for the menfolk. I have no doubt that she's been the only woman in the room, and has had to fight to get her voice heard, to finish a sentence. To a lot of younger people, the idea of a woman as the presidential nominee may not seem outlandish, but to the women of Clinton's generation, her nomination is the like the Apollo Program of Equality.

Point is, Trump isn't something new to Clinton. His peevish alpha-male posturing is something she has had to deal with her whole life. The other Republican nominees may have been ruffled by Trump's bluster, but Clinton's been taking that shit and spinning gold out of it for decades. He's just another white dude in a suit who expects her to be quiet while he talks, and she's not going to do it.

Trump is quite possibly the best foil for Clinton for which she could have hoped, and not just because of the cultural aspects of gender equality at play in this election. If we, as a nation, can agree on anything, it's that Clinton is not afraid to fight dirty. With Trump, she's got zero reason to hold back and zero reason to play fair. She's been clawing her way up through one of the most patriarchal institutions of American society, it's government, for decades, and now she's got an opponent who is a caricature of all the prejudice she's faced along the way. It's venal and voyeuristic, but I'm looking forward to Clinton gleefully savaging Trump in the general.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [91 favorites]


You can't teach much of anything after Cory Booker got through with trashing the education system. BAM!
posted by Justinian at 8:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


A socialist is going to win one of the biggest states in the US by like 25%

uh what?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


North Dakota is huge
posted by beerperson at 8:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


According to Wikipedia, North Dakota is the 19th largest state. So that's pretty good, I guess.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:05 PM on June 7, 2016


Hard to imagine a less palatable VP choice for Bernie supporters than Cory Booker. Sarah Palin, maybe.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:06 PM on June 7, 2016


Oh for some reason I thought they were talking about CA. NYT says ND to Sanders by about 40 points. He's behind Clinton everywhere else.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:06 PM on June 7, 2016


ND is the only caucus tonight.
posted by bearwife at 8:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


ugh three more minutes until CA results start coming in

It might be a slow one, from the nytimes re: counting votes in California, "This process will not happen fast. In general, only about 70 percent of the California vote is tabulated by noon the next day. That’s in part because ballots don’t have to arrive on Election Day."
posted by peeedro at 8:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Plus the writers strike
posted by beerperson at 8:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's also a state with a population that would barely make it the fifth largest city in California, so calling it 'one of the biggest' in an election is... bizarre.
posted by tavella at 8:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


MSNBC has now projected Hillary at 2043 with the preliminary vote coming in from the CA districts. She has the pledged delegate majority.
posted by dw at 8:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


But they've got huuuuge...tracts of land.
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Bernie won the 13th largest state by population and 18th by area by nearly 50 points.

Mind you, 4% of the state voters. But still.
posted by dw at 8:11 PM on June 7, 2016


Like a lot of her lines tonight that resonated to other social justice movements and historical moments, "bridges, not walls" actually has pretty deep roots in Catholic rhetoric -- the title "pontifex maximus" literally means "greatest bridge-builder" and calling the pope the "pontiff" is a reference to his important work of building bridges (originally between God and man, but almost immediately turned rhetorically to mean bridges among men of different sorts). "Bridges, not walls" pops up with relative frequency in modern Papal rhetoric (especially w/r/t the literal Berlin Wall); Francis used the "bridges, not walls" specifically when speaking about Trump and his Mexican wall. So social-justice Catholics who've been influenced by the Berrigan Brothers and Dorothy Day and so on will know exactly what the referent there is.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [67 favorites]


And Clinton took NJ, with just under six times as many delegates, by 27 points. ND doesn't seem particularly relevant.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


That's really interesting Eyebrows McGee. It seems the divide between the social-justice Catholics and the "nothing but abortion matters and Supreme Court seats are up for grabs" Catholics will be particularly stark this year, and it will be interesting to see how Catholic notables will thread that needle.
posted by zachlipton at 8:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


fine, he can be president of north dakota then
posted by poffin boffin at 8:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


So, Clinton gave her speech in Brooklyn tonight. Guess who's coincidentally going to be in NYC tomorrow for some DNC & DSCC fundraising events tomorrow? Barack Obama. Maybe they'll grab a coffee and catch up or something.
posted by mhum at 8:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Maybe after an election not a caucus. Really, these caucus results mean nothing whatever.
posted by bearwife at 8:22 PM on June 7, 2016


Her campaign headquarters is in Brooklyn
posted by zutalors! at 8:22 PM on June 7, 2016


I'm surprised that South Dakota hasn't been called for Clinton.
posted by Justinian at 8:22 PM on June 7, 2016


Obama's also going to be on Jimmy Fallon tomorrow. I wonder if a special guest might stop by...

(And no, I don't mean Jimmy doing his crap Neil Young impression)
posted by sallybrown at 8:23 PM on June 7, 2016


A friend just pointed out that the reason HRC always wears those boxy-ass jackets is bulletproof vests. Mind: blown.

At some point during the speech my heart kind of skipped a beat and I felt stressed. I realized that I was afraid that someone would assassinate her right then and there. I had that feeling when Obama was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue on the way to the White House on the way to his presidency, too. It's so scary and wrong that these things come to mind in 2016, but there we are.
posted by mynameisluka at 8:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [39 favorites]


I actually think the more interesting thing is that it looks like Clinton might win the South Dakota primary. I would have predicted South Dakota being Bernie territory.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:24 PM on June 7, 2016




Her campaign headquarters is in Brooklyn

She actually shares a PivotDesk with Jay-Z.
posted by beerperson at 8:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I thought they hot desked?
posted by Panjandrum at 8:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Trump is fundamentally incapable of even understanding that speech from Clinton, and has no hope whatsoever of creating a substantive rejoinder. But his supporters don't seem to care.
posted by yesster at 8:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I thought they hot desked?

Hey, keep it clean.
posted by bongo_x at 8:28 PM on June 7, 2016


I thought they hot desked?

That's George Constanza
posted by beerperson at 8:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Guess who's coincidentally going to be in NYC tomorrow for some DNC & DSCC fundraising events tomorrow? Barack Obama

Yeah, it seems that Obama called Sanders yesterday and gave him one of those "adult" talks. I'm guessing Obama said that he and Hillary are moving on to the general election and Sanders can either get on board or fall into obscurity. I expect Obama to start campaigning for Clinton against Trump immediately.

It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees.
posted by JackFlash at 8:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [42 favorites]


There really isn't much of a distinctive Catholic vote anymore -- they/we vote pretty much the same as our socioeconomic peers. (Which some media outlets spin as "the Catholic vote is the best bellwether!" which ... sure, I guess, since THEY'RE VOTING LIKE THE GENERAL POPULATION AND THERE ARE SIXTY MILLION OF THEM, that is an adequate polling sample of the general population I guess.) And the official voting guide from the US College of Catholic Bishops will highlight selected issues in the campaign and note the Catholic teaching on it. Abortion will be alphabetically first, but the selection of issues will be relative balanced between those that favor the GOP and the Dems and it will remind you that if you're Catholic you're in favor of minimum wage hikes and morally obligated to stop global warming. There will be a blurb about how being a voter in a modern secular democracy there won't be a party aligned with your belief system and instead you're responsible for carefully weighing and selecting candidates to vote for based on your conscience. Most of the official hierarchy will stick to this line and avoid endorsing specific candidates. (Although it will be very interesting to see how many condemn Trump's racist rhetoric.) There are a handful on the right wing who will not-quite-endorse the GOP because of "religious liberty" by which they will mean birth control through the ACA and gay marriage are bad. One or two on the left may not-quite-endorse the Democrats, probably those in dioceses which work the most closely with immigrants.

You'll definitely see more "I'm voting GOP because I'm Catholic" sorts on the right than "I'm voting Dem because I'm Catholic" sorts on the left ... but there are a few. John Kerry, maybe. Mario Cuomo gave one of the great classic speeches about religion in politics, talking passionately about how he worked as a politician who supported abortion while being a faithful Catholic, so whats-his-face Cuomo might conceivably leverage that legacy. Usually at least one Kennedy. But it's just not a super-live form of rhetoric on the left these days.

Actually I do think it'll be a lot more interesting how many public right-wing Catholics avoid endorsing Trump because of the racism, and how many outright denounce him.

But yeah, Hillary's speech was just very history-aware and very intersectional in its choice of referents. Which, fun for nerds.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


My mom works for a non-partisan research institute that tracks women in US elected office, and runs various programs to engage young women in politics. She's worked there for more than thirty years now, and has been eligible for full retirement benefits for quite some time. She was thinking about retiring this year, but when Clinton announced that she was going to run my mom canned those plans. I didn't work in this field for this long to stop just as a woman mounts a serious presidential campaign, she said.

I voted for Bernie in the primary, but tonight I'm glad that my mom will get to retire after spending her life working toward this moment.
posted by ActionPopulated at 8:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [46 favorites]


It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees.

This might be the only thing that makes me appreciate the U.S.'s absurdly long election process.
posted by Dalby at 8:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Jay-Z!? Pretty sure it's Beyoncé.
posted by humanfont at 8:31 PM on June 7, 2016


JackFlash: "It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees."

Someone mentioned Michelle Obama might get in the mix (maybe based on her commencement speech at CCNY). If so... ooh boy. It's gonna be like the Avengers up in here.
posted by mhum at 8:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


A friend just pointed out that the reason HRC always wears those boxy-ass jackets is bulletproof vests. Mind: blown.

So one of the completely weird sexist things that I have niche knowledge in is that there is amazing amounts of sexism in the bulletproof vest/plates world. Very few people make women's body armor, and when they do, it's very rarely very good and not even kind of trying to make it for all women's body types. There's no reason it can't be done: it's just that few people bother.

So yeah: when Hillary Clinton wears shitty, boxy- looking clothing, it is most likely because even as one of the most powerful women in the goddamn world, she is still suffering from sexism in ways that no one would even expect.
posted by corb at 8:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [136 favorites]


Yglesias: It's time for Bernie Sanders to admit he lost and drop out
But now that everyone has voted (okay, not DC, but I think even the most die-hard Bernie Bro knows he's losing here), it's time for him to admit that he lost, endorse Clinton, and move on to his next act.

A lot of people are going to be agreeing with me about this today and tomorrow, and they'll mostly be invoking the need for party unity or the specter of Donald Trump. But I think Sanders sincerely believes he'll be the stronger candidate against Trump, rendering this argument unpersuasive.

The real reason, anyway, has nothing to do with Trump. Sanders should drop out for the sake of the millions of young people he's engaged in politics — many of them for their first time ever — and who could have decades of constructive engagement in the process if he teaches them the right lessons.

Those lessons, clearly visible from Sanders's own career, are that big change is hard and if you try for it you are likely to lose, but just because you lost is no reason to give up. It's also no cause to whine about how you've been cheated or take refuge in denial that it's truly over. You need to dust yourself off, move on to the next thing, and try to win more votes in the future.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [31 favorites]


I actually think the more interesting thing is that it looks like Clinton might win the South Dakota primary. I would have predicted South Dakota being Bernie territory.

Two adjacent states, demographically similar (largely white/rural) and both contests on the same night near the end of the primaries. If Clinton holds on to SD, then this is more evidence that Sanders voters are more effective in caucuses.
posted by maudlin at 8:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]




That is so fascinating, corb. Thanks for your perspective. "There's no reason why it can't be done, it's just that few people bother" seems to be endemic to everything related to a woman.

I don't even know that her jackets are shitty, but boy are they boxy. Now that aesthetic makes more sense.
posted by mynameisluka at 8:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Is Sanders really going to spend the next month and a half going around desperately begging super delegates to switch to him? If he doesn't concede gracefully this week it's going to quickly go from sad to pathetic.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


JackFlash: "It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees."

Someone mentioned Michelle Obama might get in the mix (maybe based on her commencement speech at CCNY). If so... ooh boy. It's gonna be like the Avengers up in here.


Don't forget about Joe and Dr. Jill!
posted by sallybrown at 8:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Well I don't know if any other special guests will drop by but Madonna is booked to appear on the Tonight show with Obama.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:36 PM on June 7, 2016


i really want diamond joe "debating" trump, in this scenario it's trump blustering cretinously while joe smirks into the camera making jerkoff motions with one hand and sipping a beer with the other
posted by poffin boffin at 8:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [39 favorites]


Pretty sure after Obama leaves the Oval Office, Biden gets to just keep living in the pool house
posted by beerperson at 8:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [29 favorites]


MSNBC is reporting that the NYT is reporting that Bernie laid off 1/2 of his campaign staff.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:39 PM on June 7, 2016


poffin boffin: "joe smirks into the camera making jerkoff motions with one hand and sipping a beer with the other"

and the beer is schlitz
posted by mhum at 8:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


The real reason, anyway, has nothing to do with Trump. Sanders should drop out for the sake of the millions of young people he's engaged in politics — many of them for their first time ever — and who could have decades of constructive engagement in the process if he teaches them the right lessons.

This is what I keep coming back to. There are a lot of folks out there excited about Sanders who have not meaningfully participated in the process before, or in some cases, checked back in briefly after Obama in 2008. I include a non-trivial number of poetically interested teenagers too young to vote this cycle. Bitter resentment and futility is not the lesson I want them to come away with. Sealing in that enthusiasm to build a base for progressive candidates for decades to come is the best legacy Sanders could possibly leave, far more important than whatever noise Cornel West makes at the platform committee, and I hope it's not too late.
posted by zachlipton at 8:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


Pretty sure after Obama leaves the Oval Office, Biden gets to just keep living in the pool house

Over the garage, like the Fonz.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


joe smirks into the camera making jerkoff motions with one hand and sipping a beer with the other

Somewhat counterintuitive, but Biden doesn't actually drink the booze drinks.
posted by dersins at 8:42 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Homeboy can pound those Bucklers tho.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Damn right, he fucking pounds them.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Biden doesn't actually drink the booze drinks.
Neither do George W. Bush nor Trump! Kinda funny that three of the most “who would you want to share a beer with” recent politicians would, at most, politely sip an O’Doul’s.
posted by nicepersonality at 8:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


i really want diamond joe "debating" trump, in this scenario it's trump blustering cretinously while joe smirks into the camera making jerkoff motions with one hand and sipping a beer with the other

Comedy Central really missed a golden opportunity not offering The Daily Show to Biden after Jon left.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


They couldn't; he already had a "full-time" job... but come January...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:49 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is how I picture Biden during any debate: wearing shades and eating an ice cream cone from Salt and Straw. One of my favorite pictures.

All of the running around shouting about math reminds me of Rove freaking out during the 2012 election.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


There we go, SD was just called for Clinton.
posted by Justinian at 8:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


The claims about the number of new Sanders voters seem to be anecdotal. When I look at the vote totals I see that he has about 10 million votes. Obama had more than 17 million votes in 2008. We are a bigger country now. Of course Hillary also had more votes in 2008 (17 million vehicles 13 million).

Bernie has a very passionate group of core followers, but it isn't anything approaching what we've seen before in terms of expanding the party.
posted by humanfont at 8:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


It's possible Clinton is going to win 5 out of 6 tonight, only dropping the caucus in North Dakota in which approximately seventy people participated. I think the message to Sanders is loud and clear; please, please, please know when its time to bow out.
posted by Justinian at 8:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Fabulous Instagram post from Clinton.
posted by bearwife at 8:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sanders meeting with Obama on Thursday, per White House Press Secretary.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


JackFlash: "It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees."

mhum: Someone mentioned Michelle Obama might get in the mix (maybe based on her commencement speech at CCNY). If so... ooh boy. It's gonna be like the Avengers up in here.


And meanwhile, Trump can't get any credible Republican to go to bat for him. Even knobs like Rick Scott would literally prefer to talk about a tropical storm than his party's nominee. And those that will speak for him have been instructed to call reporters and rival politicians racist until they agree Trump is the best.

If the Democrat Avengers are assembling, we need to establish Trump's Marvel avatar as well. Red Skull is out, even if his supporters would like to make him that. The Red Skull could at least lay out a plan. A Thanos comparison would be also inappropriate, even if his stories are often as confusing as Trump's speeches. Thanos knows how to delegate effectively, I'm not sure if Newt Gingrich even counts as an infinity gem and besides, he only has the one.

No, right now Trump is the Mole Man, Harvey Elder, and he's telling his moloids that the plan is for them to go out there and bang their heads off Cap's shield all day. He hears from all the best people, just fantastic people, that this is Cap's number one weakness.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


We argued about which villain Trump best resembles a few threads ago. Kingpin was in the running, but we decided he was the antithesis of Trump in many ways: prefers to stay out of the limelight, truly cultured, intensely monogamous. I like the Mole Man and the moloids.
posted by stolyarova at 9:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Poor Mole Man, he just wanted to be loved...
posted by Sangermaine at 9:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't know enough comics trivia to specify exactly which member, but Trump is definitely in the Serpent Society.
posted by sandswipe at 9:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


IMPORTANT UPDATE: I am now in love with them.

I am just going to keep watching the s issorlift animation until Clinton gathers enough ki to cast hadouken.
posted by happyroach at 9:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]




I agree with those reasons for ruling Trump out as Kingpin. Fisk would find even the suggestion offensive. It's hard to come up with a good supervillain avatar for Trump though because generally, supervillains are effective, competent people with some degree of gravitas. Dr. Doom is almost as shameless a self promoter as Trump but the dude built a time machine in his spare time, so Doom's bragging rights are earned.

I could see a case for Trump as Mojo though. The relentless hucksterism, the behavior straight of a parallel universe, the alarming stuff on his head. This would mean assigning X-Men roles to the DNC heavyweights, but maybe I should go find that old thread with the first Trump villain-off first.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


As seen on Twitter:

2008: It's Hillary's job to unite the party.

2016: It's Hillary's job to unite the party.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [35 favorites]


Trump is a broken, half-programmed Doombot: he thinks he's Doom, but really all he got was the self-aggrandizing ego.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh geez, this Clinton video is really good.
posted by nicepersonality at 9:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sanders has pulled ahead in Montana.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:20 PM on June 7, 2016


You know what I haven't had in a while?

My next recommended, auto-play video was a live version of NIN, "March of the Pigs." This was a brand new incognito window with no browsing history.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:21 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Starting to doubt a lot of the people I follow on twitter are actually socialists because they are acting like they've never gotten their hearts broken by an election before.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [56 favorites]


Can I whine about the coverage some? Yes, I know you've heard it before. But the "respectable" media is going to have to figure out a way to cover Trump.

Driving home NPR was covering Trump's speech and using phrases like "on message" repeatedly, in contrast with his blatant racism attacking a judge for being "Mexican." The subtext--though I'm sure they'd deny it--is that this was what really counts. They want the non-racist stuff to be the "real" campaign so they can do their banal "even handed" schtick and tell you whether he has sound tactics or whether the demographics favor him in swing states.

The mainstream press has spent decades basically ignoring dog whistle racism and they lost all nerve to confront it. Now they get a guy blowing a friggin' racist tuba and they're ready to move on from it while he rests the instrument on his knee.

No disrespect to tuba players, it's an honorable instrument.
posted by mark k at 9:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [34 favorites]


They want the non-racist stuff to be the "real" campaign so they can do their banal "even handed" schtick

Basic NPR Story Model:

1. Side A says blah
2. Side B says blah
3. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:26 PM on June 7, 2016 [25 favorites]


I'm able to empathize with Clinton supporters tonight in what is truly a great joy. I look forward to voting for her, I look forward to her leadership, I look forward to what her leadership will mean for so many women around the world, and I hope that my vote and ongoing participation in the political process will further legitimize the concerns and ideals I and so many others have reignited or awoken to over the course of Sanders' beautiful, messy, desperate campaign.

Now being perhaps the last time I can speak of Sanders' campaign in present tense, I'll reiterate that Sanders won me over because he speaks truth to power in a way I'd never seen a politician do in my lifetime. I'll reiterate that he says things Obama never did. I'll reiterate how important it is to fight offensively for the left and not just defend it, and how frustrating it is when people say "look at how awful the right is, we can't move left."

We all need to get behind Hillary now, it's the right thing to do and it's not such a bitter pill. But part of that getting together is acknowledging and legitimizing the American left, to which our political future must belong. There is a clear path forward, and I hope we can all help each other walk it.
posted by an animate objects at 9:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [35 favorites]


The Sanders supporters have apparently been yelling "bullshit" as the results have been coming in and booed when Obama was mentioned. Apparently he's expected to speak sometime in the next half hour.

I've already seen the folks on Facebook insisting the results are all meaningless and rigged because the AP called the race early.
posted by zachlipton at 9:31 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


A fun thing to say when someone tries to slide an NPR mention-brag into a conversation (you've experienced it—the I don't watch TV, I usually just listen to NPR kinda thing):

Oh, NPR? You know the guy who created E! Television has been running that for a while right?

Snarky, cheap, and trollish. But fun.
posted by defenestration at 9:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Stay out of r/sandersforpresident for the foreseeable future if you don't want more of that. It's denials and conspiracies all the way down.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm really worried about what Bernie's going to say in his speech tonight. There's been precious little indication that he'll be gracious in defeat.
posted by yasaman at 9:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


MSNBC is reporting that the NYT is reporting that Bernie laid off 1/2 of his campaign staff.

Even better, the NYT is reporting it themselves.
posted by msalt at 9:39 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Hey, anyone have Sanders May fundraising numbers? They're usually released pretty early in the next month, but it's been a week and I still haven't seen them.
posted by FJT at 9:42 PM on June 7, 2016


As a Bernie voter who has intentionally dialed way back on commenting in these threads and tried to not be "one of those" Bernie supporters...it's time to give it up. There was an argument for taking this to the convention when the plan was supposed to be 'Here's how I'm going to keep influencing the party platform', but the only thing Bernie has been saying for weeks is 'Clinton is corrupt and stole the nomination, and I'm going to try every trick in the book to steal it back'. That's not helping defeat Trump (who is the closest to an existential threat to America since WWII or maybe the Civil War). At some point you're against Trump, or you're with him, and the time for Bernie to choose is now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [33 favorites]


Hillary is giving Bernie an absolute fucking shellacking in California. Even worse than the one she gave him in Jersey.
posted by Talez at 9:46 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


And since Trumpy included an appeal for Sanders voters to join him in tonight's diatribe, Bernie HAS TO step up and say "NO". Remember, if you're not fighting the Orange Tire Fire, you're empowering it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:48 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Yeah, some of these numbers seem like they can't be right... the NYTimes map showed Hillary winning like 62-37 in San Francisco county with 70K reporting about half an hour ago. That's got to go the other way ultimately, right? Or at least get a lot closer?
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:51 PM on June 7, 2016


You know, tonight I'm just going to ignore that kind of bullshit. Because tonight, for the first time, a woman has a real chance of becoming our President. So fuck the haters.
posted by tavella at 9:52 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


(in response to Talez)
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:52 PM on June 7, 2016


Talez: "Hillary is giving Bernie an absolute fucking shellacking in California. Even worse than the one she gave him in Jersey."

From 538's liveblog, Beware The Order of California Returns. We should expect the gap to narrow as the counting continues but even with these early returns her margin appears to be wider than expected.

Also from that same liveblog, Did Early Call of Race Discourage Democratic Turnout?. Nate Silver suggests the possibility based on turnout in SD and NJ vs. 2008
posted by mhum at 9:53 PM on June 7, 2016


My understanding is that Clinton's huge early lead is because most of the results so far are from early/mail-in voting, which skews heavily in Clinton's favor due to being demographically older.
posted by themadthinker at 9:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


or, what mhum said
posted by themadthinker at 9:55 PM on June 7, 2016


Yeah, some of these numbers seem like they can't be right... the NYTimes map showed Hillary winning like 62-37 in San Francisco county with 70K reporting about half an hour ago. That's got to go the other way ultimately, right? Or at least get a lot closer?

Current SF numbers are Clinton up 58-41. That's going to narrow a bunch more because the early numbers are all early voting/vote by mail ballots, which aren't particularly representative of the electorate as a whole. That said, the lead in early voting is particularly dramatic, and I think we could all be a bit surprised where things settle down.
posted by zachlipton at 9:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Sanders staffers are starting to talk to the press and it seems the campaign is in some disarray.

I love how his campaign started to drag the Overton window back to the left after decades of a tilt to the right. The bird landing on his podium in Portland a few months ago was a genuine delight.

But I loathe how his campaign has become full of angry, nihilistic people who seem to delight in parroting decades of lies about the Clintons in the hopes that this will give Sanders a fighting chance. A chance he tanked when he started to claim she wasn't qualified.

Now to work towards demolishing Drumpf. To the pain.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


HRC's campaign launches Republicans Against Trump. Take the pledge, get a sticker!
posted by Talez at 10:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Heh. RATs.
posted by yasaman at 10:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I can't help but not hope that the Clinton campaign would be so foolish as to launch something with the acronym RAT.
posted by R343L at 10:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Either there's some weird backroom stuff going down right now or Sanders is waiting for as many people as possible to go to sleep before he speaks.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sanders staffers are starting to talk to the press and it seems the campaign is in some disarray.

Wow, that is not a pretty picture of Sanders:
There’s no strategist pulling the strings, and no collection of burn-it-all-down aides egging him on. At the heart of the rage against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the campaign aides closest to him say, is Bernie Sanders.

It was the Vermont senator who personally rewrote his campaign manager’s shorter statement after the chaos at the Nevada state party convention and blamed the political establishment for inciting the violence.

He was the one who made the choice to go after Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after his wife read him a transcript of her blasting him on television.

He chose the knife fight over calling Clinton unqualified, which aides blame for pulling the bottom out of any hopes they had of winning in New York and their last real chance of turning a losing primary run around.
posted by dersins at 10:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


NYT mobile app has a link to "Live: Bernie speaking to his supporters" and I've had the stream open for probably like 15 minutes and it's just beaucoup supporters waving signs. UGH I need to go to bed but I'm hoping this is something major and that's why it's taking him so long to come out.
posted by mostly vowels at 10:07 PM on June 7, 2016


That Politco story is pretty damning, if it's all true. Particularly that it was Sanders himself behind most of the turns that have seemed really off as the primaries continued past Super Tuesday. Ego seems central to a lot of it, at least based on that story (and my armchair analysis of it).
posted by defenestration at 10:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


is there a youtube stream?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:08 PM on June 7, 2016


Heh. RATs.

Ha! I have that one surname-altering browser plugin still enabled so for me the acronym is RAD. My cackling is eternal.
posted by palomar at 10:08 PM on June 7, 2016


Here ya go fffm:

Sanders Santa Monica Rally Livestream
posted by FJT at 10:10 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, live YouTube stream here.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 10:10 PM on June 7, 2016


I put $10 in for Hillary's campaign just to get things started. I'll talk to my wife tomorrow about how much we want to chip in the rest of the campaign.
posted by Talez at 10:11 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


livestream.
posted by peeedro at 10:11 PM on June 7, 2016


On the other hand, waiting until 10 PM PST and 1 AM EST doesn't bode well for this being an especially significant speech. What's that media narrative supposed to be come morning? Clinton wins 5 of 6 states with mostly crushing margins, then Bernie has a tantrum? It won't even get a ton of social media traction given how many people will be asleep.
posted by yasaman at 10:11 PM on June 7, 2016


Good speech Clinton. Especially refreshing after the constant barrage of Trump.
posted by mazola at 10:11 PM on June 7, 2016


Just FYI: Hillary Clinton's speech is now available on YouTube if you missed it.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:12 PM on June 7, 2016


JackFlash: "It's going to be Hillary and Bill and Elizabeth and Barack tag teaming Trump relentlessly like a swarm of killer bees."
mhum: "Someone mentioned Michelle Obama might get in the mix (maybe based on her commencement speech at CCNY). If so... ooh boy. It's gonna be like the Avengers up in here."

Way better gender balance.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:14 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I hope this defies 538's predictions and doesn't actually take all week.
posted by corb at 10:16 PM on June 7, 2016


Is Bernie going to show up? Holy shit I want to go to bed already.
posted by Talez at 10:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow, that is not a pretty picture of Sanders:

It seems that what Josh Marshall was saying a few weeks ago on TPM was right on the money. That it was Bernie Sanders himself who was personally responsible for the state of the campaign.
posted by Justinian at 10:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Right? Wrap it up dude, I have work tomorrow morning.
posted by yasaman at 10:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


That article and the empty podium are my two rightmost tabs right now and it's freaking me out a little and I should probably close one of them (but not this one never this one)
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:24 PM on June 7, 2016


WE GET IT BERNIE YOU'RE TALKIN BOUT A REVOLUTION.
posted by Talez at 10:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
posted by zachlipton at 10:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Good grief, now they're playing "Uprising" by Muse.

I've never been sure whether or not that song is supposed to be self-parody. But either way, it perfectly encapsulates the way Bernie's campaign has gone off the rails.
posted by teraflop at 10:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's actually kind of a huge downer watching the crowd wait for Bernie.... they all sang along super loudly to the lyric in this Muse song about "we will be victorious". Dude has absolutely led these people down a primrose path.
posted by palomar at 10:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't remember a word of Ross Perot's concession speech, but I do remember it ending with him asking his wife for a dance and that was the first time I ever heard Crazy by Patsy Cline and it was lovely.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


I put $10 in for Hillary's campaign just to get things started. I'll talk to my wife tomorrow about how much we want to chip in the rest of the campaign.

If you live in Oregon, you get a $50 tax credit for a political donation to anyone of your choice. CORTEX. Free money, paid back to the penny when you file your state taxes. MATHOWIE. Hint, hint.
posted by msalt at 10:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Those poor youths holding and waving signs. RELEASE THEM FROM THEIR MISERY. They're looking visibly tired.
posted by yasaman at 10:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


"Stop in the name of love before you break my heart" -- great song choices here for the warmup
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Stop! In the Name of Love" on the Bernie feed is fucking on point.
posted by Mothlight at 10:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


At least the songs are mellowing out?
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:31 PM on June 7, 2016


🌉 > ⬛️
posted by Talez at 10:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


The people behind the podium don't know this, but they're actually going to be stuck there until the Electoral College votes in December (it ain't over 'til it's over!).

Always read the fine print when you go to one of these rallies.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I have the California Democratic presidential results page open. I can't even remember their names but the other two dudes that were in at least one Democratic debate: not even in that list. But lots of other random people are. What possesses someone to file to run in a single state??
posted by R343L at 10:35 PM on June 7, 2016


In my headcanon, the songs match up with what's going on in a back room, as Bernie's advisers try to coax the tire iron out of his clenched fists and convince him to be reasonable. Soothing noises. Et cetera.

Man. Shit's got to be TENSE for the campaign workers right now. I feel for them. But seriously, Bernie, these people out there screaming for you? They're tired. They deserve honesty, they deserve respect, they deserve to go the hell home and eat a sandwich and go to bed.
posted by palomar at 10:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


This is worse than the Comcast hold music
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


MSNBC put up an interesting graphic. After tonight Hillary Clinton will have received something around 33,000,000 votes in presidential primaries. All other female candidates in history received a combined total of 825,000 votes in presidential primaries.
posted by Justinian at 10:37 PM on June 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


aaah god and you think the rep is finally coming on every time the song changes
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:38 PM on June 7, 2016


On the Road Again?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:38 PM on June 7, 2016


The WaPo stream is down to me and 56 other people now.
posted by yasaman at 10:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


After tonight Hillary Clinton will have received something around 33,000,000 votes in presidential primaries. All other female candidates in history received a combined total of 825,000 votes in presidential primaries.

Just wait 'til she gets ~65,000,000 general election votes.
posted by dersins at 10:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


The sign wavers are waving harder in one specific direction and cheering. Do we have movie sign?
posted by palomar at 10:42 PM on June 7, 2016


With most all of the San Francisco results in, Clinton is up 55-44. I'm a little surprised by that.
posted by zachlipton at 10:42 PM on June 7, 2016


Sanders entering now, introduced as "The next President of the United States"
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016


In other California Primary news, California's retiring woman Democrat Senator (Barbara Boxer) will be replaced by another woman Democrat, because in the open primary, the top two vote-getters are Kamala Harris (State Attorney General) with 40% (so far, 20% counted) and Loretta Sanchez (Congressperson, best known for defeating one of the WORST Republicans of the time, Robert K. Dornan) with 16%. None of the Republicans have over 10%.

In my Congressional District where a woman Democrat is retiring, a man Democrat, Salud Carbajal is leading with 32% (only 13% counted) with second a toss up between two man Republicans, Justin Fareed and Katcho Achadjian with about 21% each. The only woman, Democrat Helene Schneider, only has about 13% but she's Mayor of Santa Barbara so nobody up here in San Luis Obispo cares. Grand total-wise, all the Democrats total about 50% of the vote while all the Republicans total about 48%, so the November election is still going to be close. (And that Democrat the California Republican Party sent out negative mailers to ME over, Bill Ostrander, ended up with only 5%... good jorb!)

Most of the California Congressional incumbents are winning outright with over 50% (but some small percentages counted), but one of the worst Republicans of THIS era, Darrell Issa, only at 54% in a district that's over 60% Republican (only 8% counted). Overthinking analysts say it may be because he was openly supporting Trump (and why wouldn't he? before he became a crooked Congressman, he was a crooked Businessman, just like the Donald... let's just hope the two don't get too close or we'll see some Trump buildings burned down for the insurance money... yes, he's THAT crooked).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Anyone have any idea what this delay might mean?
posted by corb at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016


"The next president of the United States"?? Are you shitting me?
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


"The next president of the United States"?
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh lord jesus. Having himself announced as the next president is... not a great sign.
posted by palomar at 10:43 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Next President of the United States?

Does not bode well for concession speech. Also coming on to Darkness Rises? OK, bro.
posted by Talez at 10:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bernie you're drunk, go home.
posted by Justinian at 10:44 PM on June 7, 2016


ARE YOU KIDDING ME

I AM HAVING A RAGE BLACKOUT
posted by yasaman at 10:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Will this speech rival Rubio's 3rd-place victory speech in Iowa?
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:46 PM on June 7, 2016


My husband upon hearing this: "Oh my God! Is he calling for armed revolution? Are the troops hailing him Imperator? Honey, grab my rifle, we don't want to be seen as lukewarm when Emperor Bernie dons the purple! I mean, that is the only way he can do this, right?"
posted by corb at 10:47 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I dunno, it sounds like he's winding up for something besides "ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH DEAR FRIENDS".
posted by Justinian at 10:47 PM on June 7, 2016


F
F
F
F
BibleThump
posted by Talez at 10:47 PM on June 7, 2016


BTW, in my county, San Luis Obispo, with 42% counted, Clinton has 53% and Sanders has 45% (the 5 never-heard-of-them candidates... none of them have more than 0.3%, and combined, they have less votes than "write-in votes")
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:50 PM on June 7, 2016


Okay, not so bad so far, yes yes, young people are important. "We will not allow right wing Republicans to control our government. And that is especially true with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate."
posted by yasaman at 10:50 PM on June 7, 2016


That Melania seems nice, right?

Not so much...

I will say, though, that Ivanka seems to be a classy and decent human being.
(And Ivanka converted to Judaism - her husband is Jewish. I bet family dinners are going to be quite awkward now...)
posted by SisterHavana at 10:51 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Huh. That almost sounds like he's ready to concede.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:51 PM on June 7, 2016


Oooh he is going off on Trump. Signaling the end, that he's throwing behind Clinton?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:51 PM on June 7, 2016


Yeah this sounds like the start of a concession speech now.
posted by corb at 10:52 PM on June 7, 2016


This... this doesn't sound much like a concession speech to me yet...
posted by mhum at 10:52 PM on June 7, 2016


Oh wait, back to class issues and campaign finance reform.
posted by yasaman at 10:53 PM on June 7, 2016


His face looks a little more resigned. Let him work up to it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:53 PM on June 7, 2016


This is the same wind-up Ted Cruz had for his concession speech. I think he's going to end it.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:53 PM on June 7, 2016


Doesn't sound very concession-like to me either.
posted by monopas at 10:53 PM on June 7, 2016


Makin' a lot of promises here for someone who's just lost the primary.
posted by yasaman at 10:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, he's not attacking Hillary at all, even if his shouters are chanting "Bern it down". I think it's definitely coming to a concession but it looks like it's choking him.
posted by corb at 10:54 PM on June 7, 2016


I hate that it's so hard to tell what he has in mind
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is some serious Lucy Van Pelt with the football business that he's playing out right now, if he does intend to concede. Let's get this crowd all super-crazy whipped up and then tell them it's over! That won't be a total shitstorm...
posted by palomar at 10:54 PM on June 7, 2016


He keeps saying we. If he concedes, I bet he defines 'we' as 'democrats'
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


*huge sigh of relief* "You all know it is more than Bernie. It is all of us together."
posted by yasaman at 10:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh yeah. "But you all know it is more than Bernie."
posted by corb at 10:56 PM on June 7, 2016


I hope, fffm. I hope.
posted by palomar at 10:56 PM on June 7, 2016


Well, at least there haven't been accusations of corruption and rigging.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:56 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am cringing in anticipation of the tidal wave of boos from supporters once he starts talking about the need to support Clinton (whether in this speech or another, eventual concession speech).
posted by duffell at 10:56 PM on June 7, 2016


oh god my sound keeps cutting out. If he concedes will someone just post it here immediately so I don't keep watching this forever and can actually go to bed?
posted by corb at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


"Next Tuesday we continue the fight in Washington, D.C."
posted by mhum at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


"(crowd chanting BERNIE) You all know it is more than Bernie. It is all of us together! What this movement is about is millions of people from coast to coast standing up and knowing that we can do much, much better as a nation. [...missed some...] Together, we know what our job is, and that is to bring the American people to make a government that works for us, not the 1%. Next Tuesday we continue the fight to the next primary in Washington D.C."

Fuck.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


I mean, still not a single mention of Hillary, but...I guess better than nothing.
posted by yasaman at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Nope. On to DC.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Aw, dude. Come on.
posted by palomar at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


NEXT TUESDAY WE CONTINUE THE FIGHT
posted by corb at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Continue the fight. Jesus Christ.
posted by Talez at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Sigh.
posted by dumbland at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


WHAT
posted by corb at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Crowd loses its shit.
posted by nom de poop at 10:57 PM on June 7, 2016


Ok then!! He lost me!
posted by ramix at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Next Tuesday we continue the fight"

Heckuva job, Bernie.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Well, shit. Doesn't sound like he's conceding, at any rate.

I kinda wonder if he walked out planning to do it and then he just couldn't bring himself to say the words.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"And then we take the fight .... to Philadelphia"
posted by mhum at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016


Uggggh, says they are taking the fight to Philadelphia.

Old Man Yells At Cloud.
posted by Justinian at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


Godammit. Seriously?
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


oh FFS Bernie, all the way to the convention? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you.
posted by duffell at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Take the fight to Philadelphia?!?! Is he saying he wants a contested convention?
posted by yasaman at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is he really going to go through with his plan to try to sway to the super delegates?
posted by Sangermaine at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016


Oh crap. There goes the convention.
posted by monopas at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016


GAAAWWDD
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:58 PM on June 7, 2016


Yup taking it all the way to the convention. FFS
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sanders couldn't win San Francisco but he thinks he can win DC?
posted by zachlipton at 10:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


He's meeting with Obama on Thursday. Maybe the anger translator is still around to talk some sense into him then.
posted by peeedro at 10:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Are you fucking kidding me. "We will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate."
posted by yasaman at 10:59 PM on June 7, 2016


Listen to those dumbos boo Clinton. How tone deaf do you have to be to loudly boo the first female nominee in history?
posted by Justinian at 10:59 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


"Kind call from President Obama" my ass. He chewed your tailfeathers out. I'll bet you five bucks.
posted by corb at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


I honestly don't know what to say.

Ohhhh, with the nasty little "I look forward to working with HIM", I think I do know what to say. Fuck you, dude. Fuuuuuuuck you.
posted by palomar at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


First time he's admitted the writing is on the wall. He's done, but can't say it in front of that crowd.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


"We are going to fight hard to win the primary in Washington D.C. and then we take our fight for social, economic, racial, and [...] justice to Philadelphia. I am pretty good at arithmetic and I know that the fight in front of us is a very steep fight, but we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate [...]. Tonight I had a very kind call from President Obama and I look forward to working with HIM to make sure we move this country forward. Tonight I had a very gracious call from [with?] Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victories tonight (crowd boos)"
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016


Although I voted for Bernie Sanders, I like Hillary Clinton too and am absolutely thrilled that she's clinched the nomination. (It was a tossup for me right up until primary day and I voted for both Clinton and Sanders delegates - in Illinois we vote for individual delegates to the convention in a separate line item from the presidential vote on the primary ballot.) It gave me chills to watch her speech and watch history in the making.

I only wish my grandmother (dad's mom), who was a staunch Democrat and told me that when in doubt, vote for the women in the primaries, was here to see this. I cannot even begin to imagine how this would make her feel.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


And what's happens if/when Philadelphia doesn't go Sanders way? Where will they take the fight then?
posted by defenestration at 11:00 PM on June 7, 2016


And what's happens if/when Philadelphia doesn't go Sanders way? Where will they take the fight then?

He'll fight it ALL THE WAY TO THE SUPREME COURT!
posted by Talez at 11:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Great now I can go to bed sad and angry
posted by theodolite at 11:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


How tone deaf do you have to be to loudly boo the first female nominee in history?

How can you be so tone deaf as to not step right the fuck on that right away when a crowd does it for you?
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:01 PM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


Well, he's tossed out his chance to leave with some dignity intact. It's irrelevant what he does, in any case. The primary is over and Clinton can fully focus on Trump now.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:02 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Thank you all. The struggle continues."

Yeah Bernie, the struggle is real.
posted by zachlipton at 11:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


"Thank you all. The struggle continues." Bernie out. Bowie's Starman as the outro music.
posted by mhum at 11:03 PM on June 7, 2016


Well, whatever. Clinton is done campaigning against Sanders. I have no doubt she'll continue treating him and his campaign graciously in her speeches, as she did tonight, but this is her time now.
posted by duffell at 11:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


He's got some pointed word choices in there in that he's going to fight for social, economic, etc. justice at the convention, but he didn't say fight for the nomination. That might be him pivoting to fighting over the platform or whatever without explicitly pissing off the supporters who just waited hours for him to show up and speak.

But still...damn it, dude.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:03 PM on June 7, 2016 [10 favorites]


First time he's admitted the writing is on the wall. He's done, but can't say it in front of that crowd.

Then who can or will he say it in front of?

And now the crowd is booing Clinton. And he's not exactly pushing back, yet.

He raised his hands for silence very quickly, and in obvious annoyance.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Starman!
posted by homunculus at 11:04 PM on June 7, 2016


Enjoy that meeting with Obama on Thursday, buddy. It's not gonna go well for you. What the hell is his narrative going to be until the convention? "Superdelegates, overturn the will of the people because I said so"?

Whatever. Bye, Bernie. It's done.
posted by yasaman at 11:04 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


He raised his hands for silence very quickly, and in obvious annoyance.

But he didn't have the courage to say anything.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [17 favorites]


Couldn't everyone just gaslight Sanders by carrying on as if he conceded?

"A gracious concession speech--"
I DIDN'T CONCEDE!
"Generous in defeat--"
I CAN STILL WIN!
posted by um at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


So in the end, he's just another dude who is angry that a woman is getting the job he thinks he deserves.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [41 favorites]


Yeah, I noticed that word choice too, scaryblackdeath.

But raising his hands is not enough on the Clinton boos. He should have said something.
posted by corb at 11:05 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I imagine Obama just sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office staring into Sanders' eyes and slowly shaking his head in disappointment.
posted by Justinian at 11:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


It's not though, this is part of a process for the Bernie Bros and diehards. Clinton needs them too, and this is a warm up to a concession speech from Bernie (I hope). He can't concede in front of this crowd after 2 weeks of overheated rhetoric, but look at him, he's deflated, he knows this is it, and he's making (small) concessions to that effect.

Hopefully he's going to dial down the "she's corrupt" bullshit now, refocus on issues, and deliver a resounding concession at the convention. His supporters deserve no less, and if he plays it like that, all is forgiven, he comes out a hero.

Now do that, Bernie, and stop giving us all cause to think that you wont.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:06 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


feeling kinda vindicated about my deep gut feelings that he's fundamentally no different from any other old white man in politics.
posted by palomar at 11:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [21 favorites]


Yes he can. A man of honor would. A man of honor would say "We fought hard, but we lost. Now is the time to lick our wounds and get up again for the new fight."
posted by corb at 11:07 PM on June 7, 2016 [14 favorites]


Hopefully he's going to dial down the "she's corrupt" bullshit now, refocus on issues, and deliver a resounding concession at the convention.

If he doesn't concede before the convention he won't get a speaking slot!
posted by Justinian at 11:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Enjoy that meeting with Obama on Thursday, buddy. It's not gonna go well for you.

Interesting bit from the statement from President Obama about tonight:
In addition, at Senator Sanders' request, the President and Senator Sanders will meet at the White House on Thursday to continue their conversation about the significant issues at stake in this election that matter most to America's working families. The President looks forward to continuing the conversation with Senator Sanders about how to build on the extraordinary work he has done to engage millions of Democratic voters, and to build on that enthusiasm in the weeks and months ahead.
Why would Sanders ask Obama to meet with him?
posted by Sangermaine at 11:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


What a dill weed. Sanders is going back to the Senate, but he's squandering any power he could have wielded in the next Congress.
posted by dw at 11:08 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


he's coming back out in a minute to say "PSYCHE!" right

where is the psyche
posted by murphy slaw at 11:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Maybe he's going to ask for something in order to endorse Clinton. That's all I can think of.
posted by corb at 11:09 PM on June 7, 2016


I've thought he was a sexist since the debates last year when he conspicuously kept talking over or outright not listening to women, over and over, but I haven't felt comfortable posting about it until now
posted by theodolite at 11:09 PM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


I guess charitably it might take him a couple days to come round and probably he will. Other candidates have in the past hung on a bit. Sigh though at not saying something when Clinton is booed. :(
posted by R343L at 11:09 PM on June 7, 2016


Why would Sanders ask Obama to meet with him?

He thinks he has leverage, and is going to try to make demands, is my guess.
posted by dersins at 11:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Maybe he's going to ask for something in order to endorse Clinton.

I would bet good money it's this. The man's entire senate career has been built on this strategy. And for that honestly I don't begrudge him. But come on, dude. We all know it's over, rein your supporters in.
posted by biogeo at 11:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Popular votes in the primaries per Wikipedia:
Clinton: 15,050,598
Trump: 11,676,271
Sanders: 11,363,225
posted by kirkaracha at 11:12 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


So I hadn't watched any campaign speeches until tonight.

Clinton's amazing and her speechwriter deserves lots of prizes and she is a damn fine speaker and I cried. Trump is just wow scary, and his speechwriter is a dystopian crazypants who needs to get a puppy or something. Bernie sounded a lot more like Trump than like Hillary.
posted by monopas at 11:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


He thinks he has leverage, and is going to try to make demands, is my guess.

Senator? You can have my answer now, if you like. My offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.
posted by Justinian at 11:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Yeah, to be fair, Clinton's speech following Obama's clinching of the nomination said, among other things, "I will be making no decisions tonight," and she didn't formally concede for like a week after.

...but she also didn't vow to take the fight all the way to the convention.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:13 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


MSNBC: "The male ego is a delicate flower."
posted by XMLicious at 11:15 PM on June 7, 2016 [33 favorites]


Back in 2008 (when the election was far closer than it was today), Clinton was clear that when she said "I will be making no decisions tonight" and her surrogates made it clear that she was interested in making a deal. She wasn't leading the charge to a goddamn floor fight.
posted by zachlipton at 11:16 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Maybe he's going to ask for something in order to endorse Clinton.

Predicted response.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


He needs time to lay the ground work for the concession, he's not just giving up, if he's anything like what he says he is, he needs to convince the Bernie Bros to follow him into acceptance. He should've done more for that before now, but he can't just turn on a dime and bring all his momentum along to Clinton's side with him. They need to be talked into it. He has to start now, better late than never. He's got a little bit of time between now and the convention where his tone and rhetorical softening can make a difference, especially in a turnout election. I wouldn't fault him for not conceeding tonight, and I'm not sure if Clinton would even want him to if she's looking at the whole picture.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I wonder how much Sanders' defiance is motivated by money problems. Last I heard they had some serious financial overhang, pouring tons of resources and ad buys into the remaining states just as fundraising was starting to wane. Maybe he wants to milk a few more million from his supporters to avoid having to crawl back to the DNC for help retiring his remaining campaign debt? Even Clinton took until 2013 to pay off the debt on her '08 run.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:17 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


But there's a world of difference between laying groundwork for concession and whatever that was that we just watched. That was Trump levels of bonkers, yo.
posted by palomar at 11:18 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Also, he's always been an outsider candidate, there's more of an argument for "taking the fight to the convention" for Bernie than for institutional actor extreme Clinton 2008. But there's a difference for him between a soft "we took this to the convention...where I conceded in a dramatic pre-planned speech endorsing the nominee" and "where I fought an idiotic and doomed floor fight for every delegate and gained zero support for either my candidacy or my policy platform".
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm glad he didn't attack Clinton but god I wish he would have said literally anything to repudiate the booing. His failure to get that sort of hostile shit under control is an egregious failure of leadership. A single sentence could have made a difference there, just one "hey, that doesn't help anyone, don't do that." Would that have been hard? I miss "your damn emails!" Sanders. That was the guy I trusted.
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:20 PM on June 7, 2016 [32 favorites]


Also, it may have been addressed upthread, but I heard on the CNN stream earlier that the Sanders campaign was initiating significant layoffs, including among the advance teams that would have been tasked with planning general election rallies. It definitely didn't sound like he was confident in the odds of victory.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:20 PM on June 7, 2016


It just feels like he's continuing to double down every time his path to victory narrows. What happens after losing in DC?

I'm thinking of Dean and the "it's not about you, it's about the country" call that helped walk him off the ledge. What call would it take defy Sanders's inertia?

I think he may have started to #feelthebern a bit too much, himself.
posted by defenestration at 11:22 PM on June 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Nobody in this election can lay claim to honor. Those days are gone. This election cycle has been a Complete Clusterfuck and will continue to be so until and probably long after someone is elected. Everything about this whole process has been an Onion headline. Remember what most of us were predicting and pontificating a mere year ago? Yeah, flip that script sideways and upside down and none of us would have predicted where we are now. I, for one am not hopeful for a positive outcome.
posted by futz at 11:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I don't fault him for not conceding tonight, nor did I particularly expect him to. Not conceding is a far cry from insisting he's taking it to the convention. He had a few moments where he acknowledged that this fight is about more than just Bernie Sanders where it seemed like he grasped reality, but then launched into nonsense about how winning DC (which he won't) will make all the difference (which it won't). He could have talked about building a movement that lasts years, but he's apparently adamant he wants to watch it all Bern, and the hopes of all those exhausted sign-waving supporters don't mean a damn.
posted by zachlipton at 11:23 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wonder how much Sanders' defiance is motivated by money problems. Last I heard they had some serious financial overhang, pouring tons of resources and ad buys into the remaining states just as fundraising was starting to wane. Maybe he wants to milk a few more million from his supporters to avoid having to crawl back to the DNC for help retiring his remaining campaign debt? Even Clinton took until 2013 to pay off the debt on her '08 run.

According to this Politico article posted earlier in the thread, he sounds terrified of ending up in debt:
A conversation with former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin about getting left in personal debt from his own 1992 presidential campaign has stayed at the top of Sanders’ mind.

He demanded that the campaign bank account never go under $10 million, even when that’s meant decisions Weaver and campaign architect Tad Devine have protested -- like making the call in the final days before Kentucky to go with digital director Kenneth Pennington’s plan to focus on data and field, instead of $300,000 to match Clinton on TV.

Sanders ultimately lost there by just 1,924 votes.
posted by dersins at 11:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


You know when I think of Bernie, I remember my own organizing time - that feeling that you got when you were giving speeches to a roaring house, that high of people cheering and shouting for you. But I was lucky - I had other people there to be like "they're not really shouting for you, they're shouting for what you stand for, don't let it get to your head, just get in and get out." I wonder if Bernie ever did? I wonder if Bernie went out there to give a concession speech, and just lost it hearing everyone chant his name - that magic of a crowd. It doesn't make me less irritated, but - I just wonder about it.
posted by corb at 11:24 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'm thinking of Dean and the "it's not about you, it's about the country" call helped walk him off the ledge. What call would it take defy Sanders's inertia?

It sounds like Obama, among others, have given this a try already ..
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:24 PM on June 7, 2016


T.D. Strange: "He needs time to lay the ground work for the concession, he's not just giving up"

Y'know, I really hope that this is the correct read on the situation. From the outside, I'm going in with the expectation of a concession speech, so it sounded all wrong. However, that's clearly not what the crowd was expecting and things might have gotten ugly if he dropped a straight-up concession into this crowd. And, as others mentioned, Clinton herself didn't actually concede on the day of the last primary but a few days later. But, if that's the case, he's making me nervous with his talk of D.C. and Philadelphia and "fighting for every delegate"?
posted by mhum at 11:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


We all know it's over, rein your supporters in.

Exactly how does one do that?
I am serious in this. Do you know of a way to get thousands of people, hopped up on slogans and mind numbing chanting to stop and think as individuals again and concede to that point?

I think you have a very odd understanding of humans and especially humans in crowds. Add in the "new blood" aspect of most of his supporters, and you have the recipe for a really bad time. I mean, we're not talking about people just venting frustration and swearing in public. We're talking mayhem and riots.

I really do wonder sometimes about what people really think a political leader can do against a mob. One on one, or one on a small group, sure, you can talk sense and de-escalate the situation. But thousands? Heck, even a few hundred is just asking for something stupid to happen.

No. This was probably the only way to get out of tonight safely and without making things really, really bad later (i.e. internet keyboard warriors of the lesser socialized interweb cultures pulling more shit like making threatening phone call to reporters or doxxing super-delegates).

Yes, it would be lovely if everyone shared the same cultural mores and values that (figurative) you do, but seriously, when faced with a mob of hopeful (but angry) people, you do not poke the badgers.
posted by daq at 11:25 PM on June 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Predicted response.

Aw, I thought that was going to go to the Willy Wonka You Get Nothing clip.
posted by um at 11:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [8 favorites]


After today's events, continuing to run just weakens the message. He doesn't need to stay in to pull Clinton to the left now. He's diluting his brand. Just setting his supporters up for greater disappointment.
posted by monopas at 11:27 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


None of this seems like the actions of a man who plans to have a viable future in politics. Is he planning to keep his Senate seat?
posted by palomar at 11:28 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


In the state where he's won elected office for 40 years? Probably.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:29 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am serious in this. Do you know of a way to get thousands of people, hopped up on slogans and mind numbing chanting to stop and think as individuals again and concede to that point?

In this case Sanders should start by noting, has in the past, that Clinton on her worst day would be vastly better than Trump at his best. He should start by noting that her achievements here are historic and should be respected regardless of who you voted for. And he should start by saying that he's running a positive campaign (even if he hasn't) based on issues and not personality attacks. He starts by saying his campaign is above the sort of slander and cheap shots and nonsense issues that other politicians (he could say Republicans) are after. He starts by showing a little respect.

Even if he didn't concede tonight, that would have been a big step in the right direction. He didn't take it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:30 PM on June 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


None of this seems like the actions of a man who plans to have a viable future in politics. Is he planning to keep his Senate seat?

I sort of assumed he'd decided he was done with running for office when he started raising money for the DNC chair's primary opponent.
posted by dersins at 11:32 PM on June 7, 2016


Trump says he's giving a major 'everything wrong with the Clintons' speech next week

L'esprit de l'escalier "is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late." SPOILER ALERT: WhitewaterMonicaLewinskyBenghaziEmailsEmailsEmails.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:32 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Do you know of a way to get thousands of people, hopped up on slogans and mind numbing chanting to stop and think as individuals again and concede to that point?

Yes, actually. You give them a direction and a purpose. I think it would even have been quite conceivable to say any of the following:

1) "We're licked this time, but we have the strength to change the rules, to make sure outsider candidates have more of a chance. And we're coming back in 2020."
2) "They think we're going to take our ball and go home. They think you're not true Democrats, that you won't vote against Trump just because Clinton will be the nominee. Let's prove them wrong!"
3) "So we're going to help Clinton win. But we're going to hold her feet to the fire and make sure she includes X platform!"

Literally, there's dozens of things he could have said. There are a lot of ways to turn a crowd. Now - I'm not sure how great he is at public speaking, I haven't listened to a lot of his speeches. Maybe he doesn't know how to do that. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be done.
posted by corb at 11:33 PM on June 7, 2016 [45 favorites]


Forty years of goodwill and admiration can be squandered very, very quickly...
posted by palomar at 11:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Did he talk about down ticket races at all? I'm getting really excited about the possibility of the dems actually taking back a bunch of seats. I really wish that was where Sanders would move. Can you imagine all that energy directed at getting super progressive candidates running for dog catcher to governor!?
posted by R343L at 11:34 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


Trump says he's giving a major 'everything wrong with the Clintons' speech next week

L'esprit de l'escalier "is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late." SPOILER ALERT: WhitewaterMonicaLewinskyBenghaziEmailsEmailsEmails.


Perhaps one of his revelations will be that when Clinton was running for Senate she accepted campaign contributions from known dickbag and overt racist DONALD J TRUMP BILLIONAIRE.
posted by dersins at 11:35 PM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


daq: "Do you know of a way to get thousands of people, hopped up on slogans and mind numbing chanting to stop and think as individuals again and concede to that point?"

In my fantasy world, Bernie would have been emphasizing the importance of local organizing and down-ballot races to building a sustainable movement. That way, when the presidential nomination slipped away from him, he's still got something to point his supporters' energy towards. Sure, you might not get your guy at the top of the ticket but that's no reason to not vote out your state senator or city councilman or whatever. Hell, if Sanders could direct even a portion of his supporters to vote in off-year elections, that could be some real, long-lasting change. I heard a little bit of this in his speech tonight with the part about change coming from the bottom not the top.

On preview: what corb and R343L said
posted by mhum at 11:36 PM on June 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


In my fantasy world, he would have been emphasizing the importance of local organizing and down-ballot races to build a sustainable movement a month ago, but tonight would have been an excellent time to start. Instead he thinks he can somehow build more momentum if he wins the DC primary?
posted by zachlipton at 11:38 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


He's gonna win the DC primary even stronger than Rubio won all of his! Might even be a 10-90 victory!
posted by Justinian at 11:40 PM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Did he talk about down ticket races at all?

I thought that was where he was gonna go with the "change has to come from the bottom up, not the top down" line. But he didn't say it in those words, no.
posted by teraflop at 11:40 PM on June 7, 2016


scaryblackdeath:
Yeah, I agree that those are all things that should have been happening since the beginning of this whole campaign. In fact, at the very beginning, it was much more like that.

But then we had the "new blood" problem. There have been a whole bunch of comments and commentary in the media about all the new voters, or "new to the process" voters who don't really understand how the whole thing works.

I just think that the point where Sanders would have been able to keep this whole thing clean was months ago, but I also don't think he had the staff or political science trained PR handlers who could have gotten out in front of that whole problem. I mean, to a greater degree, one of the main things that would have been helpful would have been handing out 11th grade social studies books at the conventions, and maybe Democratic Party caucus and primary voting rules. Making sure that every voter had someone hand them the refresher course on how to interact with our democracy. Of course, we also don't see that happening with the DNC itself, so there's that problem (sigh), but especially because this candidacy was based upon a whole lot of raw emotional energy, but not a lot of actual deep understanding of the system (by the voters, but also by Sanders himself, it seems), the very first thing that should have been at least tried was consensus on the rules and planning on how to get energized voters the basic playbook so they could stay on message and out of trouble (i.e. the internet brigades). That would have nipped the Bernie Bro bullshit in the bud, and he would never have had to weaken his 'brand' (guh, I hate that so much. Trump has a 'brand'. Real people have ideas. Bleagh).

But I'm just finally commenting because I am sort of caught up with this thread. I haven't been able to comment on any of the previous ones because they moved so damn fast.
posted by daq at 11:41 PM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


One of the guests on MSNBC... I'm not actually sure who she is... kind of excoriated Sanders by making the point that this was another example of a man standing in front of a woman and trying to deny her something that she has fairly earned.

Ouch.
posted by Justinian at 11:44 PM on June 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Exactly how does one do that?

How about right here in his own speech we all just heard?

"But you know it is more than Bernie, it is all of us together."

And right after that line he could have defined a more inclusive and wide definition of 'together' that includes Democrats and all Americans: "This includes the millions of voters and thousands of volunteers who have participated in the primaries that have taken place across America. Who have voted for not only for me, but for my opponent, Secretary Hillary Clinton."

I was disappointed that he didn't say that, but instead just goes back to throwing red meat and talking about fighting on to the convention.
posted by FJT at 11:53 PM on June 7, 2016 [13 favorites]


I am serious in this . . . . I really do wonder sometimes about what people really think a political leader can do against a mob.

This is really not that hard, and I am serious about that.

You came in behind on delegates, with no path to the nomination and to top it off you seem to have had a losing night. But you can tell your supporters how incredible the journey was (which has the virtue of being true in his case) and how it is time to move to the next stage in the fight, which is against Trump and in favor of progressive legislation in the next Congress, under a Democratic president. And how you will still be championing these issues in the Senate but how you need their support and you need Trump not to be in the White House.

It's a standard template, and there are boos at some points when you make this speech, but unless you really think Sanders' supporters are a mob with no understanding of politics but a proclivity for violence or something they would keep backing you.
posted by mark k at 11:54 PM on June 7, 2016 [11 favorites]


Oh man. I'm imagining a Sanders-led revival of Dean's 50-state strategy. The enthusiasm of his supporters combined with his own sheer stubbornness. Sure, the Deep South might continue to be impenetrable for Democrats, but if they're ever going to be able to capitalize on demographic shifts to flip Texas, someone needs to lay the groundwork.
posted by mhum at 11:55 PM on June 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Perhaps Sanders will march into the Oval Office, look Obama square in the eye, and demand to be made president there and then. When you think about it, it's actually his best shot.
posted by um at 12:02 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


"We're licked this time,...
Please take this as me being friendly, and I do agree with a lot of your points.
I'm going to stop you right there.
You never tell a crowd they lost or they are losing or they are losers. Ever. That's like, rule #1 of pacifying mobs. Just look at how Trump uses it to rile up crowds. You see how well it works to get people all kinds of het up and angry?

I really want a leader who can do the things you describe. I also want a society where mob action and group behaviors are better understood by everyone and that people are better able to keep their wits about them in crowds and crowd situations. Sadly, that's not going to happen anytime soon (well, at least the crowd part).

I mean, I guess I'm fatalistic about crowds, but I've seen too many situations where crowds just do stupid things. There is a reason we have laws about 'inciting a riot'. People get hurt.


As to the other things, I really cannot see anyone who wants to be a political leader trying to get those ideas across without seriously damaging their support, especially from dilettante voters. The majority of Sanders voters are the apathetic people who do feel outside the system. Sanders could have brought them in, but I don't see that groundwork being there at any time in the campaign. The overall analysis of the campaigns messaging has been (sadly) lacking in any kind of real "here's what you need to do for us to win" other than soliciting donations and attending rallies (well, that and voting, but that's boilerplate). This is why we ended up with the brigades and Bernie Bros agro posturing, instead of actual organization and planning and canvasing and division of labor among the newly energized base.

I don't see a lot of it from the Clinton campaign either, sadly, but her husbands teams built the playbook on how to run a national campaign through massive media exposure to begin with (which, frankly, I am impressed with Hillary Clinton's expertise and subtle use of modern media skills). But those are my own personal political interests (use of media in controlling the narrative). I am not saying that the Clinton campaigns are lying (because I know someone is thinking that is what I am saying). I am saying that mass media is a tool that is used to disseminate information, and the use of narrative is key to effective communication. Slogans will get you only so far. You have to have an over-arching narrative to engage people, which, if my guess is correct, we aren't even up to the end of the first act. We've just been given two examples of how well Hillary Clinton, the candidate, can hold her own against the buffoon Trump, but we are also seeing how well Trump is able to manipulate the media itself into giving him free reign in spreading his own narrative. One is precise and highly effective. The other is practically vaudevillian in nature, seeming to attract the baser natures of the populace to rise up and howl for blood.

But it is too soon to just end this chapter. Sanders can, and probably should go all the way to the convention. I know, I know, we are all tired of the constant arguments between the various supporters, and good lord, whoever the writers are, they seem to have stretched this subplot of the Democratic nomination process beyond the tediousness that it already was. But a bad writer is someone who creates a mob and then just has them disappear, never to be heard from again. No, those people still have to be in the story, and the only way they are is for them to have redemption in the ending of this process. 80%, isn't that the number? 80% of Sanders supporters will wholeheartedly vote for Hillary Clinton in November. If Sanders were to concede tonight (or even next week), that number will be far lower.

And this has been daq's storytime. Good night, kids.
posted by daq at 12:04 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Remember when one of McCain's supporters said something racist about Obama and McCain stood up for Obama?

That's how you stand up to your supporters.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:06 AM on June 8, 2016 [34 favorites]


I mean, McCain is a jerk, but seriously.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why would Sanders ask Obama to meet with him?

He needs all the superdelegates he can get.
posted by one_bean at 12:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Statement from the White House on tonight's results and the Thursday meeting.
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Did the crowd really boo Clinton longer than they booed Trump?
posted by halifix at 12:31 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'd be delighted to see America get a socialist president, but after that speech on this day, not Bernie. I expected him to concede and perhaps, as others have observed upthread, not to was an appropriate tactical decision, but his speech to my ears was all rhetorical bluster and sloganeering. Not gracious, not inspiring and not unifying, while Hillary's was all those things. If Bernie's gonna fight on he should get a better speechwriter.
posted by valetta at 12:34 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I didn't find Hillary's speech inspiring or unifying, it seemed filled with calculated feel-good phrases delivered blandly. She did show a bit of graciousness, which I felt like I hadn't seen much of lately.
posted by scrowdid at 12:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I was out tonight, so missed following everything as it unfolded. I caught up on this thread first (natch), and just now finished watching the video of Clinton's speech.

You guys. I had read all the excerpts above, and it sounded impressive and everything, but even though I knew exactly what she would say, hearing her talk about her mother brought home the amazing historic impact of this moment and I'm all sobby.

I wasn't on board with her, even just a few months ago. Her militarism was (and is) the biggest mark against her, I didn't love the idea of having someone else from a family who'd already been in the White House in my lifetime running again, and I just plain didn't like her. I wasn't even in the US while she was First Lady, so was neither subjected to the relentless right-wing rhetoric nor had much awareness of specific policies she may have been associated with during her husband's time in office. Yeah, I thought it would be great to have a woman president, but not this woman.

I was excited about Sanders--a (democratic) socialist? in this country? woo!--until the bloom started coming off the rose. First, it was the dawning realization that his campaign's narrow focus on economics and class, while vitally important and refreshingly welcome, didn't allow much room for attention to issues important to me. To give just one example, women who, right now, have no viable options for reproductive healthcare don't have the luxury of waiting for class systems to be repaired. Then, Sanders disparagingly referred to Planned Parenthood as "establishment" after they endorsed Clinton, and I was really upset.

At that point, I had two Democratic candidates to choose from, neither of whom I liked much. None of the other candidates were remotely appealing to me, either, even without the Trump threat. I didn't know what to do. I started reading. I warmed to her a bit more, but still without great enthusiasm. On my way to the polls the day of the primary, I was still turning my options over in my head, and didn't decide for whom to cast my vote until I was standing in a booth with a ballot and a black pen.

I voted for Clinton. Not because she was a woman, not because I thought she was more "electable" (which I think is a dumb and vague criterion, anyway), but because despite my strong reservations for both candidates, I felt that she was the one who would be more likely to pursue and make actual headway on some key issues I feel strongly about. I also felt glad that Sanders' presence in the race made sure certain topics were given voice and weight they wouldn't otherwise have had, and accepted that I would just need to support downticket candidates and organizations that can try to influence decisions and policies in areas where I disagree (strongly) with her.

I've felt increasingly happy about my choice over the last couple of months, the more I've learned about her and watched her campaign, but only in the past week have I become truly enthusiastic. Between her Trump takedown the other day and tonight's amazing message of inclusiveness and collaboration, I am now genuinely excited to be here and to be a Hillary Clinton supporter. Let's go out and build some goddamned bridges!
posted by Superplin at 1:08 AM on June 8, 2016 [39 favorites]


Let's try this again.

I didn't find Hillary's speech inspiring or unifying, it seemed filled with calculated feel-good phrases delivered blandly.

It doesn't strike me as particularly useful to criticize a politician for being "calculated." All politicians must be calculated if they are to win elections.

This includes even those politicians who, like both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, make a great pretense of not being calculated.

Often, of course, those calculations turn out to be miscalculations, but that doesn't make them any less calculating.
posted by dersins at 1:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Mod note: Sorry but no, we're not going to have an extended debate about the "calculated" thing.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Just came here to idly wonder whether Hillary Clinton knows "Stronger Together" is Kara Zor El's motto on Supergirl...

Because if she does, awesome reference and good for Hillary for being even geekier than I thought. (And it would sort of count as a "dog whistle" -- a reference to a geeky show that only fan of the show would understand, which is a fun change from all the dog whistles which can only be understood by Evangelical Christians or by racists, on the Republican side... Woo hoo! Geek girl dog whistle!)

And if it's a coincidence (or even if not, I guess) I wonder what it says about what we expect from our female heroes and leaders in 2016 that both would end up with that slogan? Sort of self-effacing. It's not about one leader, it's about all of us together. I guess I kind of wish women could get away with being ego-maniacs like men, but whatever. It's true, anyway. We are stronger together. And yes... it does take a village to raise a child. :-)
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:39 AM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


he majority of Sanders voters are the apathetic people who do feel outside the system. Sanders could have brought them in, but I don't see that groundwork being there at any time in the campaign.

To the extent that traditionally apathetic "non-voters" are in this election, they're in as symbolic voters out to find a non-Establishment candidate. This is a very vocal part of the base, a part that engages in a lot of online harassment and borderline eliminationist rhetoric, but this is a symptom of their style of political engagement more generally.

Sanders has done nothing to try to bring these voters into the mainstream in large part because they are voting against "the mainstream of the party" and for anything that is not that. The shame of Sanders's campaign has been the way it has pandered to this crowd; I think that's ethically wrong, but I also think it's a tactical mistake if Sanders is genuinely interesting in moving his ideas and preferred policies forward, as opposed to keeping the symbolism of his "outsider" candidacy going.

Frankly, once it became impossible for him to become the nominee, his campaign began focusing on those of his supporters who don't give a toss about policy; that this is largely because they are the only part of his base that will still be there if Hillary is the nominee.
posted by kewb at 3:09 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


NPR/AP: Clinton wins California.
posted by saturday_morning at 3:34 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]




Calling it now, Hillary will win and it'll all be decided on election night. Not sure she'll be a good President, but she trumps alternative, especially when appointing judges.

She'll have Bill and Barack campaigning for her. Add in Bernie and that's a helluva bench.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:07 AM on June 8, 2016


From the Tiger Beat on the Potomac article linked upthread:
In the days following, before Sanders scored his win in Indiana that campaign aides feel no one acknowledged because it came the same night Trump locked up the Republican nomination, the calls started coming in from Democratic power brokers.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s call was part advice, part asking a favor, urging Sanders to use his now massive email list to help Democratic Senate candidates. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin was the most obvious prospect, and Reid wanted to make introductions to Iowa’s Patty Judge and North Carolina’s Deborah Ross—to help Democrats win the majority, but also to give Sanders allies in making himself the leader of the Senate progressives come next year.

Reid, according to people familiar with the conversation, ended the discussion thinking Sanders was on board. He backed Feingold. But that’s the last anyone heard.

Word got back to Reid’s team that Weaver had nixed the idea, ruling out backing anyone who hadn’t endorsed Sanders. Weaver says it’s because the Senate hopefuls had to get in line for Sanders’ support behind top backers like Gabbard and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.)—though neither has a competitive race this year.

Sanders never followed up himself.
I really really really hope that's just shoddy reporting, because if that's accurate it sounds like Sanders is going to sit out campaigning after the convention. The downticket races are crucial, but he's just going to ignore anyone who didn't endorse him? I want to believe that he wouldn't sink retaking the Senate and possibly the House during the most optimal election season to do it in, all out of spite. But I'm a lot less sure than I was yesterday.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:30 AM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


Wow. Rereading that Obama thread is trippy.
Also, now I really want to send the mods a giant fruitbooze basket. We haven't exactly learned and grown in the past eight years.
posted by Superplin at 4:30 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


The thing about Sanders is that even candidates who did support and endorse him, and who asked for his help, were left out in the cold. I live in Pennsylvania and I'm sure that if Sanders had told his supporters to vote for Fetterman, he could have won. It was a three-person race and Fetterman only needed about 40% to win. He was a big Bernie supporter, and it was really weird to read about Fetterman reaching out for support and hearing nothing from the campaign.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:38 AM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


Also, I can see a lot of my dislike of Clinton stemmed from that primary season. Luckily for all of us, she has learned and grown since then.
posted by Superplin at 4:41 AM on June 8, 2016


Harsh but fair.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:00 AM on June 8, 2016




Snarky little article from The Telegraph: Why Bill Clinton Could Be the Best First Lady the United States Has Ever Seen

After reminding us that both Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama won their rounds in the Family Circle First Lady Bake-Off:
While all previous First Ladies have had to go through the 1950s rigmarole of being perfect suburban wives, Bill will not face those same pressures. Not even because he is a former President, but because he is a man. This mere fact of biology means he is not expected to have cookie recipes up his sleeve, understand what décor would work best in the Oval Office, or wear the latest fashions, albeit demurely. He will not be trolled for his looks, or told to ‘drop a few pounds’ like Michelle Obama.

Even Hillary, who has gone through all of this herself, doesn't expect any of it from her husband.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:16 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


As someone who supported Sanders and voted for him earlier in the primary, the past couple of months have been disappointing to see. Not because Sanders lost, I considered him the long shot candidate, and was impressed by how far this unknown senator was able to get. I supported him because I appreciated his progressive message, but at some point his message took a backseat to his ego, and that's what's been so disappointing to see happen.

I've been gaining a lot of respect recently for Hillary Clinton, and am excited that I'll be able to vote for her this November. She earned the nomination, and I hope Sanders will come around and accept that.
posted by airish at 5:26 AM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]


Wouldn't it be awesome if Bill Clinton himself could call everyone's bluff about the stupid cookie thing? He should call reporters and offer up his favorite cookie recipe. I'm sure the NY Times would be willing to publish it, along with a look at the double standards with respect to the First Lady and the first First Gentleman.
posted by peacheater at 5:36 AM on June 8, 2016 [30 favorites]


He should give two cookie recipes, his favorite circa 1992 McDonalds-loving Bill Clinton cookie recipe, and his favorite now that he's Mr. Healthy Vegan guy.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:44 AM on June 8, 2016 [34 favorites]


I'd love to be the first First Gentleman purely just to drop my baking skills on America and watch them be all oh, snap, check out that quiche, his toenail polish is on point, too
posted by middleclasstool at 5:47 AM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]


By week five he's wandering around the White House in a U of A t-shirt and a shitty bathrobe, high-fiving people and randomly camping out in staffers' offices to talk about Penny Dreadful, eatin' Baked Lays
posted by middleclasstool at 5:52 AM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


Bill: Day One. The Arsenio Hall Show is back, it's on C-SPAN now, every song gets a saxophone solo, and it airs seven days a week, four hours a night.
posted by box at 5:53 AM on June 8, 2016


Would be pretty shitty for Bill to make the first day/week about him. Hopefully he will keep a pretty low profile for at least a while.
posted by ryanrs at 5:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Belatedly:

Nobody in this election can lay claim to honor.

Clinton can. She has consistently demonstrated a level of grace, dignity, restraint, intellect, insight, and leadership which has placed her above the fray and confirmed that she is far and away the most qualified candidate for the job and the one most likely to demonstrate the kind of quiet competence which has been among Obama's best attributes.
posted by multics at 5:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [65 favorites]


Greg Sargent: Top supporters of Bernie Sanders gently tell him: It’s time
The problem for Sanders is that this now requires him to explicitly call on the super-delegates to overturn the will of the voters as expressed in Dem primaries and caucuses. Given that she currently leads among them by 571-48, this would require a massive stampede away from the person who won far more votes.

Merkley — who is a super-delegate himself — said flatly that Sanders should not pursue this course any longer. “The super-delegates are set aside when you make the judgment that you have a majority of the pledged delegates,” Merkley told me. “I would not support a battle that involves trying to flip super-delegates.”

Grijalva, meanwhile, told me that he expected Sanders to continue trying to win over super-delegates, but only for a limited period of time.

“The reality is unattainable at some point. You deal with that. Bernie is going to deal with this much more rapidly than you think,” said Grijalva, who is also a super-delegate. “At some point, when we’re trying to flip 400 super-delegates, and it’s not gaining traction, I think you have to come to the conclusion that it’s not going to happen. You just move into a different direction. And that different direction is that we begin to try to integrate the party.”

“He’s gonna do the right thing,” Grijalva said.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:57 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Why would Sanders ask Obama to meet with him?

Even if Sanders did ask for the meeting, I think it's going to involve some straight talk from Obama about how Sanders needs to behave himself going forward.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:58 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


NPR played a medley of individual eactions from the crop on a news clip on Senator Sanders's speech last night with the usual 'rigged system,' 'it's not over 'til it's over,'
and then some guy who said he'd vote for Trump if Sanders didn't get the nomination, adding 'might as well pop the Zit'' and bring on the Revolution yada yada.

My reaction was a combination of Oh, Jesus; I can't even and what an apt metaphor -- although to whom or what, the focus shifts.

Not to mention Popping zits ? On NPR ? Has it come to this ? Why I can't even Take Two...
posted by y2karl at 5:58 AM on June 8, 2016


Poll: Clinton Holds Four-Point National Lead Over Trump — or Does She

However, in our early test of a scenario where these third-party voters do in fact head to the polls in November, the results are far more damaging for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. This cuts against conventional wisdom, at least in the case of the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, where it would be reasonable to expect support would be taken away from the Republican side.

posted by Drinky Die at 6:11 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


An online national poll 5 months out, before one party even selected their nominee, where 10% of the respondents aren't even registered to vote, let alone likely voters?

C'mon, bro.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


I just heard NPR interviewing Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Raul Grijalva, supporters of Clinton and Sanders respective. Grialva made me cringe with just how totally unprepared he was, and in a way I think it reflects a microcosm of the entire Sanders campaign.

I say this, remember, as a Sanders supporter. Grijalva talked feelings a lot, but when the questions came to action and policy and the real workings of things he just sputtered and ummed and erred a lot.

Brown sounded like he'd been gargling gravel for the past forty years, but he had his shit together. He had a message, he stayed on message, he was able to answer questions in cognizant and sensible way.

As I look back on it, that's basically the differnece between Sanders and Clinton. Sanders and his supporters, like me, always had a lot of enthusiasm and high emotion, but there was never a good ground game, never a really solid answer from Sanders on the tough questions he was raising. And, frankly, I still don't think he was a very good candidate. Not awful, not Bush level incompetent, or Cruz level skinsuit, but awkward and never fully there in a policy sense.

While Clinton was organized and on point from the beginning with solid organization and groundwork.

Much like Occupy Wall Street, despite having identified an exestential problem that no one else seems to want to even admit exists much less address, Sanders just never gelled and never manifested the organization or plan that would be required to even have a conversation about the huge unspoken problem.

So here's to Clinton, I hope she beats Trump like a rented red headed step mule. She's talked about making Texas competitive and while that maybe hubris, I applaud her for her audacity.

I just also hope she can find the whatittakes to recognize the economic and social doom looming above us and admit that it exists. Because, and I've said this before, I'm convinced that if someone on the Democratic side doesn't do it soon there *will* be a Fascist revolution in the USA.
posted by sotonohito at 6:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]


An online national poll

From one of the few pollsters to get the UK election right. They are a legitimate survey. All polls are five months out unless you have access to time machine polling, bro.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:25 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


C'mon bros, don't be like that. Remember, bros before polls!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:30 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


If Trump actually gets the nomination (I have my doubts about that), I don't see him getting 40% of the vote. He is toxic.

Hey, if Bill Kristol can be a pundit, why can't I?
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:33 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I actually think the more interesting thing is that it looks like Clinton might win the South Dakota primary. I would have predicted South Dakota being Bernie territory.

Two adjacent states, demographically similar (largely white/rural) and both contests on the same night near the end of the primaries. If Clinton holds on to SD, then this is more evidence that Sanders voters are more effective in caucuses.


My wife is a North Dakotan by birth, and we both got a chuckle at the divergent resuls, because we both imagine the Dakotas acting like bickering siblings shouting at each other, "You can't tell me what to do!"
posted by jonp72 at 6:34 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think it's time for Bernie to concede, but if he spends a few days lining things up before a formal concession, that seems pretty normal. I wouldn't have expected him to concede on the spot last night.

My wife and I are now ready to switch gears and support Clinton, but I have to say it's been quite aggravating to feel like the press and various pundits have been saying, "So, when ya gonna quit? When? When?" since like 6 months ago. I mean he's won what, 22 states and about 1/3 of the votes between him, Clinton and Trump? I definitely get why his supporters might be feeling a bit marginalized.

R.e. Trump, I just can't even ... my wife is a nurse with a lot of experience with elderly patients and she's been saying for months now that she's convinced Trump is in the early stages of dementia. She's not joking - she thinks his near-bizarre statements and actions are pretty classic indicators, and I think it runs in his family. It's certainly a more compassionate view than my own.
posted by freecellwizard at 6:40 AM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


You never tell a crowd they lost or they are losing or they are losers. Ever. That's like, rule #1 of pacifying mob

I think it's worth examining your priors on this one! I have a weird amount of experience in pacifying mobs, in much more difficult situations (often after police violence) and I tell you my experience is that it can be done as long as you redirect. You can work them down instead of working them up. It's not as fun or exciting, but it is a thing you can do.

And I think Sanders needs to know its okay to dissipate or redirect the force. The Revolution is not today.
posted by corb at 6:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


Hey, if Bill Kristol can be a pundit, why can't I?

If you're aspiring to be like Bill Kristol we may have to hold you back a year.
posted by delfin at 6:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


My wife is a North Dakotan by birth, and we both got a chuckle at the divergent resuls, because we both imagine the Dakotas acting like bickering siblings shouting at each other, "You can't tell me what to do!"

I wonder if the divergent results can just be explained simply by the fact that ND was a caucus and SD was a primary. I'm not super familiar with the politics of the Dakotas, though. Are there are other reasons why, on the same day, one would go for Bernie by a huge margin and the other would give Hillary a narrow win?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh wow, I should have Googled before posting that about Trump. Apparently she's not the first one to notice that. For example this April Salon article.
posted by freecellwizard at 6:44 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Can I put in a plea for Bernie supporters, especially red-and-purple-state Bernie supporters, to consider running for state legislature? I honestly think that's where the revolution needs to begin. First of all, it is sometimes possible to win a state legislature seat just through sheer force of will, hard work, and convincing your neighbors that you're an honest and competent person. Second of all, running is a great exercise: you'll learn a lot about the process and you'll meet local people and hear their concerns. Third of all, a lot of incredibly important stuff goes on in state legislatures, and you can do a lot of good if you get elected. And finally, our best hope for the future is to control state legislatures in 2020, so that Republicans aren't in charge of redistricting.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:46 AM on June 8, 2016 [42 favorites]



If Trump actually gets the nomination (I have my doubts about that), I don't see him getting 40% of the vote. He is toxic.


That is my instinct as well but after the whole Rob Ford mayoralty here in Toronto I learned that I have a lot to learn. I know it's a completely different context, but the lesson was that if you're able to tap into certain veins of resentment/anger/alienation/who knows what, you can get a lot of support despite having said toxic, ignorant, racist things and not showing any real signs you might actually have an aptitude for the job.
posted by beau jackson at 6:47 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


the lesson was that if you're able to tap into certain veins of resentment/anger/alienation/who knows what

Racist white guys aren't 40% of the population. The things that will come out about this guy when everyone's paying attention will make him anathema to everyone else. It's not all out yet.
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:51 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Does anyone have that link to the article telling people why they shouldn't rain on the parade of Hillary supporters today? I meant to favorite it, but alas.
posted by avalonian at 6:52 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Do you mean this one, avalonian?
posted by Stacey at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yes! Thank you Stacey.
posted by avalonian at 6:55 AM on June 8, 2016


Speaking of Bill finding his new role in the White House, Roger Clinton's shenanigans are something the news is reporting again. I think part of Bill's new job should be keeping Roger out of trouble and getting him to get help for his drinking.

(I totally forgot that Bill had pardoned his cocaine conviction...ugh. Time to make up for that one Bill)
posted by emjaybee at 6:57 AM on June 8, 2016


Trump will get 40%. Easily. This is not going to be a McGovern-level ass-stomping unless Trump does something so far beyond the pale that absolutely no one can cover for it. Like, stopping in mid-debate to shit his pants, throwing a handful of it at Candy Crowley and screaming that All Non-Caucasians Are Now Illegal.

And even then he'd get 27%.
posted by delfin at 7:00 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


Seriously, Sanders fans? I voted for Sanders in my state caucus, but I make my living doing statistics. And the statistical reasoning I've seen on display among Sanders supporters is just as ridden with confirmation bias and wishful thinking as the "unskewed polls" proponents in the 2012 Romney campaign.

Could you explain why the poll is statistically invalid and NBC News made a mistake to report it? Should they ask for their money back for sponsoring it?
posted by Drinky Die at 7:01 AM on June 8, 2016


Bernie went all-in on California, essentially ignoring New Jersey. He dumped millions into CA hoping to turn the superdelegates. And he has lost.

And not just lost -- Hillary will end with a close to 100 delegate gap between her pledged delegates and 2338.

I can believe him staying in last night since California wasn't called, but he now has no viable path that doesn't involve arrest, murder, or overturning the will of the people.

I hope an insider can explain to him that he's run out of road.
posted by dw at 7:02 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Welp, based on my facebook feed, this NPR article sure was prescient.
posted by avalonian at 7:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]



Could you explain why the poll is statistically invalid and NBC News made a mistake to report it?


Well, it's not a random sample ("non-probability survey") and the analysis includes explaining fluctuations in the noise by saying Clinton's two point gain is because of a speech the press liked Friday, instead of just the sort of thing that happens when you take polls.

In general, the press is quite bad with polling results and the convention on these stories requires them to report on each poll as if it is news, when it is not . . . . it's a minor data point that should be interpreted only in the context of all other data points.
posted by mark k at 7:09 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Right, their analysis includes all that. So what's the problem here?
posted by Drinky Die at 7:10 AM on June 8, 2016


Speaking of Bill finding his new role in the White House, Roger Clinton's shenanigans are something the news is reporting again. I think part of Bill's new job should be keeping Roger out of trouble and getting him to get help for his drinking.

If Roger Clinton is an addict, what can Bill do? If this was AskMeta and you gave that kind of advice to someone regarding how to handle their brother ("keep him out of trouble, get him to get help"), you would be shouted down, and rightfully so. Terrible advice.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:12 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


This LGM post has some good points relevant to discussion here. Specifically, (1) the Politico article trashing the Sanders campaign suffers from the issue that Sanders did way better than expected and (2) in 2008 Clinton waited until the end of the primaries to formally concede.

I was thinking it would be gracious for Sanders to concede last night (and still kind of do) but waiting a week and a half is not a big deal especially if he starts attacking Trump. A convention fight is what we want to avoid.
posted by mark k at 7:15 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Right, their analysis includes all that. So what's the problem here?

Because they basically call themselves out for all the ways that this poll is not particularly meaningful but the headline is basically OMG TRUMP MIGHT WIN BECAUSE THIS SCIENCEY POLL.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


I liked Boxer as my senator when I was in California. Pretty glad it's a sure thing that an awesome woman is going to replace her.
posted by R343L at 7:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Some perspective:

*On May 28, 2008, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to superdelegates to vote for her as she would be more electable.
*On May 31st, 2008, Hillary Clinton spoke to the DNC Rules Committee to argue with the rules and said she would take the race all the way to the convention.
*On June 3, 2008, as Barack Obama was declared the nominee that night, Clinton was introduced at her rally as "the next President of the United States".
*Just after that primary, a poll was taken in 2008 and 60% of Hillary Clinton supporters said they would vote for Barack Obama in the general.
*Last week, a poll was taken of Bernie Sanders supporters in which 72% of them said they would support Clinton in the general.

There were lots of calls the week before the first June primary for Hillary Clinton to drop out because she had 0% chance of winning enough delegates and she was hurting Barack Obama's chances.

I'm still giving Bernie Sanders the benefit of the doubt. He's meeting with Obama tomorrow and I will give him through the DC primary.

This is not the disaster it seems to be.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [69 favorites]


Trump will get 40%. Easily. This is not going to be a McGovern-level ass-stomping

Even McGovern got 37.5% of the popular vote. Even in a best-case scenario I expect Trump would still get around 40% of the popular vote, but I'm still hoping that translates to a "McGovern-level ass stomping" in the Electoral College.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I liked Boxer as my senator when I was in California. Pretty glad it's a sure thing that an awesome woman is going to replace her.

too bad that feinstein will never retire and can sustain her life force indefinitely by draining orgone from junior aides

and i say this as a democrat
posted by murphy slaw at 7:29 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments removed. Dropping clickbait headlines into the thread isn't a great idea to start with; arguing at length about how there's nothing wrong with it is a definitely just hauling the thread in a dumb direction. Likewise, broken record here but if you're redirecting your annoyance at a specific thing or person or absent third party into a "candidate x fans", whether explicitly or implicitly those here on the site, that is not helping anything.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:35 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Trump will get 40%. Easily. This is not going to be a McGovern-level ass-stomping

Even McGovern got 37.5% of the popular vote. Even in a best-case scenario I expect Trump would still get around 40% of the popular vote, but I'm still hoping that translates to a "McGovern-level ass stomping" in the Electoral College.


Mondale got 40 percent, too, and got his ass stomped worse than McGovern in the EC.
posted by Etrigan at 7:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Y'all we are not about to solve the problem of correctly distributing responsibility for addict behavior to family and friends on behalf of the Clinton family, and having a big hypothetical argument seems like a bad idea even by "things people decide to do in election threads for some reason" standards. Drop it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:51 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


NPR/AP: Clinton wins California.

What's surprising to me is that Clinton won pretty much every county that has a notable concentration of people (with a couple of smallish, superlefty exceptions: Santa Cruz, Humboldt). Usually the more progressive candidate will take the coast and the more centrist/conservative candidate will pick up the Central Valley (which is considered "agricultural" but has a population >6 million) and suburban SoCal, but the only areas Sanders won are almost uniformly very thinly populated.
posted by psoas at 7:53 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Mondale got 40 percent, too, and got his ass stomped worse than McGovern in the EC.

That's from a different era though. Look at the 2012 Romney map. Which of the red states can you realistically see Trump losing?

(I would say Florida, North Carolina, MAYBE some single-digit wild card out west in decreasing order of probability. Texas isn't there yet. The Electoral College is why Hillary fans can breathe easy -- Trump has no realistic route to 270 -- but we're not going to see an All Red or All Blue map in this generation.)
posted by delfin at 7:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Clinton family has had their private business invaded to a terrifying degree, even by political or celebrity standards. As much as possible, it's probably best to leave their private concerns to them.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Bill will not face those same pressures [as First Gentleman]. Not even because he is a former President, but because he is a man. This mere fact of biology means he is not expected to have cookie recipes up his sleeve, understand what décor would work best in the Oval Office, or wear the latest fashions, albeit demurely. He will not be trolled for his looks, or told to ‘drop a few pounds’ like Michelle Obama.

Bill was trolled for his weight as president and even more so as President Emeritus, FFS. You can take that one to the bank.

Instead of cookies, he'll be expected to barbecue (NOT grill) and have a killer chili recipe that includes beer. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some story about him fixing some fixture or bit of plumbing in the White House because it took too long for the official maintenance team to show up.
posted by msalt at 7:57 AM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


Meanwhile on Twitter, @lizardmess is tweeting some hardcore awesome facts about FLOTUS's past:

Lou Hoover spoke five languages including Latin, which she used to translate books about rocks. I forget who she was married to. #FLOTUS

Polka dots were named after Sarah Polk, since she invented them. #FLOTUS
posted by emjaybee at 8:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


Clinton didn't just win California, she crushed Sanders there. I'm actually fairly amazed at the result. 13 points!
posted by Justinian at 8:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


...And now she tells me the Polk thing is made up. I bet Lou Hoover was still cooler than her husband though. Quit telling me wonderful lies, internet.
posted by emjaybee at 8:08 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]




The blue wall for Democrats is virtually unassailable at this point. There just aren't enough reliably red states for Republicans to lose more than a single small battleground state. And that's before demographic changes where older white people are dying off faster than young brown people gain the right to vote. Republicans needed to go all in to gain hispanic voters and instead they are going full nativist because their base is super conservative and super white and panicking about the erosion of their privilege.

Considering that in the south for instance people have been educated to vote for conservatives because conservatives want to maintain a social order where even the poorest whites are higher in social order than blacks.

They also try to maintain a system where lower class white males are valued higher than any female.

Obama and Clinton threaten to undermine the dominant social paradigm and thus must be hated.
posted by vuron at 8:14 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Instead of cookies, he'll be expected to barbecue (NOT grill)

As if half the country can tell the difference!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:17 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Clinton and Biden need to have a barbecue every weekend and work on cars on the white house lawn and pull out the bowling alley and make an awesome mancave with beer signs and pool tables and hustle white house staffers.

Bands should be invited to play but need to perform behind chicken wire in case shit gets rough.
posted by vuron at 8:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


Metafilter: Quit telling me wonderful lies, internet.
posted by Superplin at 8:20 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Obama Nominee for Ambassador Dies After Waiting 830 Days for Confirmation, Thanks To One GOP Senator

Charlie Pierce: Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton Should Be Shamed Out of Office
The column tells the story of a woman named Cassandra Butts, who recently passed away from leukemia at the age of 50. In 2014, prior to her diagnosis, the president proposed to name Butts the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas—which sounds to these ears anyway to be a pretty sweet gig. That was when the nonsense began. First, Tailgunner Ted Cruz put a hold on all nominations because he was upset with the deal the president cut with Iran, and because the Tailgunner is an unlikable algae of a human being. Later, our man Cotton jumped in and slapped a hold on Butts and a couple of other nominees for ambassadorships.
[...]
(By the way, according to Bruni, Cotton's office basically confirmed Butts's account of their meeting, but the coatholders also made sure Bruni knew that Cotton "had enormous respect for her and her career." Yeah, blow me, Gomer.)

Tom Cotton weaponized a dying woman's final days in order to "inflict special pain" on the president. Tom Cotton is a petty, sadistic swine who has the basic conscience of a cholera outbreak. He should be shamed from office, and he should be shunned by decent people.

God, I hope there's a hell, and that it's as advertised by Dante.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:24 AM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


Indeed. Don't settle for an amateur like Trump. Greg Stilson 2016!

Now I want to get one of my designer friends to do up, in Trump styling, a STILSON 2016: MAKE AMERICA GLOW AGAIN shirt.
posted by phearlez at 8:24 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]




Being back in the White House is gonna be pretty sweet for Bill. All of the perks of living there, none of the responsibilities like the last time.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:26 AM on June 8, 2016


Tom Cotton is on the rise, kids. I bet he'll be running for the big room in 2020. And he believes God has anointed him to run things.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:26 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


My 6 year old daughter probably won't remember too much of the 2016 campaign but I am hopeful that when she's 10 and 14 having a role model as PotUS will be an inspiration.

You know assuming that Hillary doesn't get paid 73 percent of the male PotUs salary.
posted by vuron at 8:29 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Obama Nominee for Ambassador Dies After Waiting 830 Days for Confirmation, Thanks To One GOP Senator

NOT EVEN A LINK TO THE ONION HOW WHY

where is my app to launch republicans into the sun
posted by poffin boffin at 8:30 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Haha as if the FLOTUS isn't basically a full time gig.

Bill will be opening so many elementary schools he is going to be losing weight.
posted by vuron at 8:31 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


What's surprising to me is that Clinton won pretty much every county that has a notable concentration of people (with a couple of smallish, superlefty exceptions: Santa Cruz, Humboldt). Usually the more progressive candidate will take the coast and the more centrist/conservative candidate will pick up the Central Valley (which is considered "agricultural" but has a population >6 million) and suburban SoCal, but the only areas Sanders won are almost uniformly very thinly populated.

I guess I'm not really convinced Sanders is the more progressive candidate than Clinton, tho
posted by beerperson at 8:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Ezra Klein: It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician.
There is something Rebecca Traister wrote in her terrific profile of Clinton that I have been thinking about for weeks. She began by admitting what everyone admits. Clinton is not a great campaigner. She does not give great speeches.
Oh, yes she does.


There's also a good quote from the profile Klein cites:
If, as in this election, a man who spews hate and vulgarity, with no comprehension of how government works, can become presidentially plausible because he is magnetic while a capable, workaholic woman who knows policy inside and out struggles because she is not magnetic, perhaps we should reevaluate magnetism’s importance. It’s worth asking to what degree charisma, as we have defined it, is a masculine trait.
posted by Gelatin at 8:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


Bill will be opening so many elementary schools he is going to be losing weight.

He's lost a hell of a lot of weight in the past 16 years. Could we stop going on about it?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:33 AM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]


My 6 year old daughter probably won't remember too much of the 2016 campaign but I am hopeful that when she's 10 and 14 having a role model as PotUS will be an inspiration.

You should absolutely have her volunteer for at least one day and get some adorable pictures. She will have bragging rights for the rest of her life, and imagine how exciting election night will be in November!

And if she ever decides to run for office, those pictures will be GOLD.
posted by msalt at 8:36 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


What's surprising to me is that Clinton won pretty much every county that has a notable concentration of people (with a couple of smallish, superlefty exceptions: Santa Cruz, Humboldt). Usually the more progressive candidate will take the coast and the more centrist/conservative candidate will pick up the Central Valley (which is considered "agricultural" but has a population >6 million) and suburban SoCal, but the only areas Sanders won are almost uniformly very thinly populated.

This supports my theory that Sanders' support is essentially bimodal. You have a group that's interested in him because he's running to the left of Clinton on economic issues - these are sort of your socialist true believers (among whom I'd include most of the Sanders supporters on Metafilter, for the record). And you have those who are voting for Sanders essentially because he's not Clinton - these supporters are probably to the right of the average Clinton supporter on many issues, particularly those to do with race and gender. This group is exemplified by the NY Times commenter I saw who said that he voted for Sanders in the primary, but would vote for Trump in the general, as he has a "visceral dislike" of Clinton, is not a feminist and thus doesn't see anything in it for him in a Clinton presidency and feels he would "survive" a Trump presidency. As Sanders' campaign became more negative, more of his supporters proportionally came from the second block. Thus you see the strange distribution of Sanders votes in California - a few superleft counties plus more conservative rural counties that have more people who can't stand Clinton.
posted by peacheater at 8:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [23 favorites]


Tom Cotton is on the rise, kids. I bet he'll be running for the big room in 2020. And he believes God has anointed him to run things.

"...Then go forth, Tom, and meet your destiny as President of the United States!"

"Thank you, God! I won't fail you!"

::cough::

"Er...Holiest of Holies?"

"Yes, my child?"

"Far be it from me to question You, the Alpha and the Omega, Lord of All Creation, but..."

"What troubles you, Peter?"

"Didn't you already promise Ted Cruz the Presidency?"

"Well, I FUCK"
posted by Sangermaine at 8:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


Tom Cotton is a petty, sadistic swine who has the basic conscience of a cholera outbreak

Front-runner for the VP slot, then?

Trump/Cotton 2016: America Great, Conscience Free!
posted by nubs at 8:39 AM on June 8, 2016


I really didn't mean anything by it other than I deeply respect the schedule that modern Flotuses have maintained. It is by no means a low stress job and in some ways I think it's much more challenging on a physical level due to the near constant social calendar.

It definitely will not be sitting around drinking beer.
posted by vuron at 8:39 AM on June 8, 2016


The almighty needs to stick to determining who wins football games, the endorsement of Bush was a big mistake.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:40 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Due to Bill's gender, I believe he will be FGOTUS. Which looks and sounds darn weird.
posted by bearwife at 8:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


He's already requested 'First Laddie' hasn't he?
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:43 AM on June 8, 2016


Bill for GOTUS!
posted by Blasdelb at 8:43 AM on June 8, 2016


BroTUS?
posted by nicepersonality at 8:44 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


"That's from a different era though. Look at the 2012 Romney map. Which of the red states can you realistically see Trump losing?"
Its a very different era today, Trump could very easily lose North Carolina as the Research Triangle attracts more young liberal voters and Trump turns off the Republican aristocrats. His racist bullshit painting Texas blue isn't at all a stretch, much less Arizona. Particularly as Puerto Rico collapses and leaks blue voters by the planeload into Florida, it may not even resemble a swing state anymore. Hell, even Missouri and Georgia aren't nearly as Red as you'd tend to think should the penicillin mold delicately balanced on a windbag fuck up hard enough.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:44 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Due to Bill's gender, I believe he will be FGOTUS. Which looks and sounds darn weird.

Totus FGOTUS.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:47 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


...As many Sanders supporters have bitterly noted, superdelegates provide an anti-democratic mechanism for the establishment to stop voters from making a choice they dislike.

If Sanders would have won more votes, more states, and more pledged delegates, but been denied the Democratic nomination by superdelegates, his supporters would have erupted in outrage, denouncing the nomination as stolen and illegitimate.

Those same supporters cannot in good faith support a Sanders push to secure the nomination with superdelegates now that he has won fewer votes, states, and pledged delegates. It would be farcical for a man who says he’s running to inspire a “political revolution” to ascend to power via party elites subverting the will of voters.

“To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates,” Donald Trump said Tuesday during his victory speech, “we welcome you with open arms.” As usual, Trump’s rhetoric was at odds with reality. The superdelegate system didn’t cost Sanders the nomination—in fact, if it didn’t exist, he would have no path to the nomination at all. As hard as it is for his supporters to accept, his victory would be less legitimate than a victory by his opponent.
The Hypocrisy of Sanders's Superdelegate Push
posted by y2karl at 8:48 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


God, I hope there's a hell, and that it's as advertised by Dante.

I assume Cotton will be in Malebolge, the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno, home of the fraudsters, which is itself divided into ten stone ditches (bolgias).

Probably he'd immersed in boiling pitch in the fifth Bolgia with the other corrupt politicians, but perhaps instead he'll be in the ninth bolgia being hacked to pieces for all eternity with the rest of the sowers of discord.

I'm good with either, really.
posted by dersins at 8:49 AM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Yeah, Bill would totally rock First Lad Of These United States (FLOTUS).

I'm having a hard time with how excited I am. I knew this moment would come even as I voted for Sanders in the NY primary, and every time I've had to point out to friends that they're basically repeating unfounded Republican propaganda from the 90s, my admiration and respect for Senator Clinton has grown.

This moment has been inevitable for the last few weeks - and yet, here we are, and I'm just buzzing with excitement.

This is going to be amaaaaaazing.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:50 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


BroTUS?


Et tu, BroTe?
posted by dersins at 8:51 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Here's a big difference with 2012: Clinton’s hoped-for bulwark is college-educated white women. Obama lost this group by 6 points in 2012; Clinton leads among them by 24 points, 57-33 percent, in our latest data.

I just don't see how a Republican can win with those numbers.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:52 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I assume Cotton will be in Malebolge, the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno

well, things have changed - he'll be condemned to eternity in joebob's infernal diner - pork rinds for breakfast, lunch and dinner - no beverages

tabasco sauce optional, except on sunday and monday, where it's mandatory
posted by pyramid termite at 8:57 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess I'm not really convinced Sanders is the more progressive candidate than Clinton, tho

That's fair. I guess I elided a bit without thinking - the point I was trying to make is that Clinton won ALL the regions I mentioned. "Sanders territory" includes maybe (but probably not quite) 10% of the state population.
posted by psoas at 9:00 AM on June 8, 2016


Looks like Walker's not angling for VP.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:00 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: beats Trump like a rented red headed step mule.
posted by sammyo at 9:00 AM on June 8, 2016


a group that's interested in him because he's running to the left of Clinton on economic issues - these are sort of your socialist true believers

Socialist true believers hate Bernie for lying about being a socialist.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:00 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Probably not the right form but question: why does a candidate need to announce their "loss"? I get at a major election there's a formality but how does it change anything? Will vote in the general be swayed? Will big donors just give more to the "proscriptive" candidate? Super politico-brownie points? I've known for months that Hil would get the nomination, but until there's a vote at the convention it's not technically over.
posted by sammyo at 9:05 AM on June 8, 2016


Probably not the right form but question: why does a candidate need to announce their "loss"? I get at a major election there's a formality but how does it change anything?

They don't need to announce their loss, but I think they need to concede in order for their most ardent supporters to get on board with the person who is actually going to be the nominee.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


The point is to rally the candidate's supporters around the person who is the nominee.
posted by cooker girl at 9:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


sammyo Legitimacy mostly. When one party concedes it legitimizes the victory of the other, it declares that the system stands, that the procedures were followed, and that the winner won fairly in the eyes of the loser.

It isn't a step to be taken lightly (I'm talking to you Al Gore you sniveling coward), but it is something that should be done.
posted by sotonohito at 9:09 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


The general election loser also concedes before the Electoral College technically votes.
posted by zutalors! at 9:09 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think it's also more respectful to the losing canidate's followers. You want to thank them for their work and faith.
posted by zutalors! at 9:11 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


why does a candidate need to announce their "loss"?

because eventually, even in the general election, political opponents have to cooperate with each other to govern

something the republicans seem to have forgotten lately

but if senator sanders wants to have president clinton's ear, it would be wise of him to concede ASAP
posted by pyramid termite at 9:12 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I posted on Facebook that I can't even imagine what the Clinton/Trump debates will be like and a friend immediately posted a link to this video. And, well. Yeah.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:15 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Cotton sounds like an asshole, but I do think maybe there could be legitimate reasons to not want to confirm the president's college buddy as ambassador to the Bahamas.
posted by corb at 9:16 AM on June 8, 2016


because eventually, even in the general election, political opponents have to cooperate with each other to govern, something the republicans seem to have forgotten lately

HOW DARE, that Paul Ryan guy is totes supportive
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:16 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


why does a candidate need to announce their "loss"?

because eventually, even in the general election, political opponents have to cooperate with each other to govern

if senator sanders wants to have president clinton's ear, it would be wise of him to concede ASAP



Because " there's no need to get snippy about it".
 
posted by Herodios at 9:18 AM on June 8, 2016


For those wondering about the ND caucus results: the total number of votes was 364. It's more evidence of how caucuses suck than of Sanders' strength in ND vs SD.
posted by tavella at 9:20 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


My Facebook feed right now is super disheartening. Top guy is a super-religious conservative, bottom guy is a Bernie Bro.
posted by stolyarova at 9:20 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


maybe there could be legitimate reasons to not want to confirm the president's college buddy as ambassador to the Bahamas.

"he explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s — the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates — and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president." (link from upthread)

I mean, yes, there could be legitimate reasons. But "because I want to inflict special pain on the president" probably isn't one?
posted by Spathe Cadet at 9:20 AM on June 8, 2016 [34 favorites]


It says right in the article:

Her qualifications not in dispute, all that remained was a routine Senate confirmation.
posted by cooker girl at 9:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I mean, yes, there could be legitimate reasons. But "because I want to inflict special pain on the president" probably isn't one?

This, but also, I don't remember Cotton being so zealous about stopping GWB's political donors, Skull & Bones bros, and mountain biking buddies from getting cushy ambassador gigs. I'd love it if we ended this practice of Presidents rewarding personal friends with ambassadorships, but that's how it's been for decades. To suggest Cotton is taking a principled stand against the practice is laughable.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:26 AM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


Yeah, Bill would totally rock First Lad Of These United States (FLOTUS).

I'll admit, I voted for Sanders back in the NY primary. I support single payer health care and breaking up banks and things that he campaigned on, and I don't really care about Clinton and Sanders as people so much as proposed policies.

I also admit I'll be supporting the Democratic nominee which is now obvious.

But one thing I really don't like about Clinton's campaign is the inclusion of Bill. This is something that it took me some time to turn around on and even as recent as 2012, I watched with enthusiasm as Bill Clinton drummed up support for Obama's reelection. However, his personal behavior (having an affair with your intern isn't just good ol' fun as there's a massive power imbalance that we would crucify a Republican president for) and his policies (neo-liberalism's zenith) make me not want him to speak at all.

I'm not holding Hillary accountable for marrying or continue to marry him as that's really all her business and there's not a "wrong" decision, but I really wish he would stop speaking (such as when he voraciously defended the "super-predator" actions) and that H. Clinton would not talk about putting him in charge of the economy because he knows how to stimulate it or some other neoliberal BS.

In the end, I'm not going to not vote for her based on the actions of Bill, but I really wish that he would fade into the background. I think Hilliary is both a better human being and has the capability of being a better President than he was.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:26 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I posted on my Facebook feed that while I have serious, serious reservations about Ms. Clinton, we all need to get the eff on board the train, because choo choo, let's not die and blow up our country, and have had an extremely positive response.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


For those wondering about the ND caucus results: the total number of votes was 364.

No this is not correct. That is the number of delegates selected to the state convention where they will then select the 18 delegates to the national convention.

You always have to be careful of caucus results. In many states they only report the number of state delegates selected, not the actual thousands of voters who selected them. You have to did deeper into the party reports to find out how many voters attended the caucuses.
posted by JackFlash at 9:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Cotton sounds like an asshole, but I do think maybe there could be legitimate reasons to not want to confirm the president's college buddy as ambassador to the Bahamas.

Read her bio and call her "the president's college buddy" again. Confirming her as ambassador wouldn't have set a precedent that some guy named Dave who was on the same dorm floor as the president 40 years ago automatically gets to set foreign policy.
posted by Etrigan at 9:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


Yeah no - that guy is irredeemable. But I would vote against even a very well qualified presidential crony of either party, based on the appearance of impropriety, and I object to the idea that because this guy is a dickweasel, everyone voting against her must have also been.
posted by corb at 9:28 AM on June 8, 2016


If you are going to follow national head-to-head polls, look at reports that aggregate multiple polls, not individual polls:
RealClearPolitics, General Election: Trump vs. Clinton
HuffPost Pollster, 2016 General Election: Trump vs. Clinton

But remember the only thing that really matters is the Electoral vote.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:28 AM on June 8, 2016


Congratulations to the people who have been supporting Hillary throughout the race. I was, personally, more closely aligned with Bernie's policies, but now that the deal is sealed I feel myself warming up to Clinton. She isn't my perfect candidate, but her speech last night highlighted her possible strengths against Trump, and her potential as president. I'll be supporting her, donating to her, and voting for her in the subsequent election.

Still, I don't think that this will be a run-away. The right wing has been cultivating hatred for Clinton for 30 years, if not more. I think that, objectively, she will demolish Trump in public performances of policy, but having listened to his supporters, I don't think that policy matters for them in this election. The question is how that reality plays out in battleground states, and how effectively the Fox News establishment is able to mud rake Hillary's past. I'm hoping that the Democratic {arty is able to get its head out of its ass (in comparison to the last midterm election) and really rally the majority of this country that seems to be opposing Trump.
posted by codacorolla at 9:29 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah no - that guy is irredeemable. But I would vote against even a very well qualified presidential crony of either party, based on the appearance of impropriety, and I object to the idea that because this guy is a dickweasel, everyone voting against her must have also been.

Every one who voted against her and didn't vote against Bush's flunkies is a dickweasel.

Wait, that's all of them, at least all of the ones who were in Congress at the time.

So yeah, they're all dickweasels.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:29 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Those RCP averages are terrifyingly close. +/-2%? Jesus.
posted by stolyarova at 9:30 AM on June 8, 2016




everyone voting against her must have also been.

Nobody voted against her, Cotton filibustered her appointment so nobody could vote.
posted by peeedro at 9:31 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


That makes slightly more sense, JackFlash. But I still think caucuses suck compared to primaries.
posted by tavella at 9:32 AM on June 8, 2016


Yeah no - that guy is irredeemable. But I would vote against even a very well qualified presidential crony of either party, based on the appearance of impropriety

"Crony"? They went to Harvard Law School at the same time.

and I object to the idea that because this guy is a dickweasel, everyone voting against her must have also been.

See, that's the problem: No one got to vote against her. A few Senators used procedural bullshit to keep her from even getting a committee vote, much less a full up-or-down confirmation vote.
posted by Etrigan at 9:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


What a dill weed. Sanders is going back to the Senate, but he's squandering any power he could have wielded in the next Congress.

This is tremendously wrong in what will actually happen and rightly so. It's wrong on precedent - look back to how the Dems coddled the far less cooperative with their goals Lieberman - and it's wrong on accomplishing things. Why on earth would the Senate dems want to freeze out someone who will pass their proposals when they're running a show on that tight a margin?

If you're peeved that Sanders isn't running the playbook in a way that you think is in the best interest of democrats then it is flat-out insane to want democrats to be punitive towards him.

Remember when one of McCain's supporters said something racist about Obama and McCain stood up for Obama?
That's how you stand up to your supporters.


Let's remember that McCain told that supporter no, he's not a muslim. Not no he's not a muslim and there's nothing wrong with being muslim.

Yeah, Bill would totally rock First Lad Of These United States (FLOTUS).

I'm totally imagining him dressed as Angus Young now and it's your fault.

In the end, I'm not going to not vote for her based on the actions of Bill, but I really wish that he would fade into the background.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wish in one hand and poop in the other, see which one fills up first. Bill Clinton remains a very popular person amongst the people HRC can expect to vote for her. He's going to be out there stumping till the end.
posted by phearlez at 9:32 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]




I object to the idea that because this guy is a dickweasel, everyone voting against her must have also been.

Nobody voted against her because there never was any vote because one person, Cotton, prevented a vote.
posted by JackFlash at 9:34 AM on June 8, 2016


I am very socialist but also extremely pragmatic.
I would rather get 80 of what I want rather than get zero percent of what I want.

Vote for preference in in the primaries and vote for the candidate most likely to get you what you want in the general election.

I would prefer no lynch mobs so no Trump for me.
posted by vuron at 9:34 AM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Thanks for the correction that it was a hold and not a filibuster or cloture vote situation. In that case, the defense of Cotton makes even less sense, and is just IOKIYAR special pleading.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is it just me or is this Tom Cotton stuff a bit of a derail of this thread?
posted by like_neon at 9:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Calling a man a dickweasel is not defending him, man.
posted by corb at 9:38 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Calling him a dickweasel but saying that he was totally justified in being a dickweasel because of the appearance of impropriety looks a lot like defending him.
posted by Etrigan at 9:39 AM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


Nobody voted against her, Cotton filibustered her appointment so nobody could vote.

Not a filibuster. A filibuster is a collective refusing to lend your vote to cloture and prevent the needed 60 votes to continue. It's really kind of iffy to call the actions of a single person a filibuster; to pull one off you need at least 41 people (presuming everyone is seated; in reality there's always some quantity of folks fucked off so what you really need is 60 people to overcome a filibuster.).

Kirk, as links point out above, was a single lone one person with a hold, a different (and amazingly, even more moronic) procedural maneuver that the Senate rules allow.

The only commonality between a hold and a filibuster is that they're not constitutionally obliged to exist. They are part of the rules Congress applies to itself and which can be changed at any time. How easy they are to change varies between the start of a new Congress and mid-Congress.

Calling a man a dickweasel is not defending him, man.

A minimization of someone's actions by portraying them as shared responsibility is a defense, just not a full-throated one. Just like "well, but everyone else was doing it too" is not a complete denial but is absolutely a call for reduced blame.
posted by phearlez at 9:40 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


It was the Vermont senator who personally rewrote his campaign manager’s shorter statement after the chaos at the Nevada state party convention and blamed the political establishment for inciting the violence.

He was the one who made the choice to go after Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after his wife read him a transcript of her blasting him on television.

He chose the knife fight over calling Clinton unqualified, which aides blame for pulling the bottom out of any hopes they had of winning in New York and their last real chance of turning a losing primary run around....

There are many divisions within the Sanders campaign—between the dead-enders and the work-it-out crowds, between the younger aides who think he got off message while the consultants got rich and obsessed with Beltway-style superdelegate math, and between the more experienced staffers who think the kids got way too high on their sense of the difference between a movement and an actual campaign.

But more than any of them, Sanders is himself filled with resentment, on edge, feeling like he gets no respect -- all while holding on in his head to the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention.
Inside the bitter last days of Bernie's revolution
posted by y2karl at 9:42 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The specific instance of Cotton placing a hold to block a nominee is a bit of a derail, sure, but the larger issue of Republicans obstructing everything and being defended for doing so because they simply must be acting on principle is very relevant to the Presidential race given that their hatred of Clinton probably exceeds their hatred of Obama.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:42 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


David Rees, acclaimed pencil sharpener, has some interesting speculuations to share.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:45 AM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


In its official press release the Sanders campaign touts the "Bernie or Bust" slogan.

Gives credibility to that Politico piece.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 9:48 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention

Clinton isn't going to be indicted. The State Department report is a nothingburger and there's no sign of any criminal intent. The first-ever woman to be a major party candidate and probable next president is not going to be indicted.

Trump's more likely to be criminally liable for some of the Trump University stuff, and he's not going to be indicted either.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:49 AM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


That Politico piece is kind of crazy, makes Jeff Weaver look more sane than Sanders.
posted by zutalors! at 9:50 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was reading this rundown of the GOP's demographics problem, and this is something that I often forget, as a person born in the late 80s:

[GHW] Bush’s 426 electoral votes [in 1988] were the fewest that the GOP presidential nominee won that decade. Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980 with 489 electoral votes and followed that up with 525 in 1984.

When people lambast Bill Clinton for being a damn dirty centrist and say that Hillary Clinton is going to do the same stuff now, I think they might be forgetting this. Seems pretty likely that a damn dirty centrist was the only person who could have successfully challenged that level of Republican dominance in the 1980s, and even if you think the Clintons are in lockstep agreement on everything (which they clearly aren't), 2016 isn't 1992.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:51 AM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


From Steve King on Death and Taxes:

To call the coming Republican National Convention in Cleveland a shit show is an understatement. It’s an abomination. Imagine the Gathering of the Juggalos and a self-help seminar for thousands of Patrick Batemans, all in celebration of a reality TV show host nominee with 100% name recognition and a Nazi bend. You get the picture. The bully has reached the pulpit.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:52 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


Driving home NPR was covering Trump's speech and using phrases like "on message" repeatedly, in contrast with his blatant racism attacking a judge for being "Mexican." The subtext--though I'm sure they'd deny it--is that this was what really counts. They want the non-racist stuff to be the "real" campaign so they can do their banal "even handed" schtick and tell you whether he has sound tactics or whether the demographics favor him in swing states.

This morning, NPR noted that Trump hasn't quite executed the much-heralded "pivot" to a more "presidential persona, focusing over the angst Republican Party leaders have expressed over Trump's vendetta against the judge in his Trump University lawsuit (which did, by the way, successfully knock the revelations of the obvious fraud that was Trump U out of the news cycle).

While reporter Sarah McCammon did note the, ah, contradiction of Trump using a teleprompter despite his previous condemnations, her report was entirely about style and completely eschewed substance. She (and I'm sure much of the Beltway media establishment shares the same feelings) is clearly aching for an excuse to judge Trump on style and not substance -- who cares if his policy prescriptions are stull lunatic, as long as he seems more "presidential." The press seems mostly disappointed in Trump for denying them that opportunity and making them instead work for a living.

Speaking of polling, NPR's Asma Khalid examined 2012's polling and reported that Trump could improve over Romney's electoral map by gaining a larger white male vote -- presuming Trump gets the same level of support among women and minorities that Romney did.

In other words, Trump doesn't have a hope, and I actually admired the way NPR managed to report that fact while pretending to report on his possible path to victory. (And by the way, Trump could go ahead and win Ohio and Pennsylvania -- and Iowa and Michigan -- and still lose to Clinton.)
posted by Gelatin at 10:02 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Place your bulk orders for popcorn now, folks: Hearings In Trump University Cases Scheduled For Start And End Of GOP Convention
posted by zombieflanders at 10:03 AM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


When people lambast Bill Clinton for being a damn dirty centrist and say that Hillary Clinton is going to do the same stuff now, I think they might be forgetting this.

Well, sort of - people are mad that Clinton seemed to sell out Democratic Ideals in order to drag the party to the right. The question is: how far to the left can you be and still win? If you think Clinton overshot the mark, you might be ticked off.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:03 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm still more mad at Republicans and those who vote for them.
posted by zutalors! at 10:04 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Another big reason for a public concession in the particular case of Sanders is that his campaign has been built largely on the premise that the party is hopelessly corrupt and he's the only one with any integrity among them, despite their rigging the odds against him. That message of self-righteousness and conspiracy has been getting louder and angrier, and if that Politico piece is right it's coming from Sanders himself. It's certainly festering and growing among a contingent of his followers.

Sanders publicly and graciously conceding, maybe telling his followers they fought the good fight but now it's time to join with the party and fight Trump, would go a long way to defusing all that anger and paranoia. Him raging to the end, then being forced to bitterly slink away is only going to fuel some of his follower's resentment since they're already convinced the election has been stolen by corrupt elites.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:05 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


That Politico piece is kind of crazy, makes Jeff Weaver look more sane than Sanders.

Indeed. And it makes Sanders look more like Trump insofar as campaign management is concerned.
posted by y2karl at 10:06 AM on June 8, 2016


Calling him a dickweasel but saying that he was totally justified in being a dickweasel because of the appearance of impropriety looks a lot like defending him.

Not only that, Cotton admitted that there was no real principle involved, but that, as Frank Bruni related Cotton told him, "blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president."

The fact that Obama and Cassandra Butts were friends was not a matter of anti-cronyist principle, but a lever to deny someone Obama cared about so much as a Senate committee hearing (not to mention a President his Constitutional right to appoint ambassadors).

Cotton's behavior was completely inexcusable and not at all justified by any sort of authentic principle.
posted by Gelatin at 10:07 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


In its official press release the Sanders campaign touts the "Bernie or Bust" slogan.

:|
posted by defenestration at 10:12 AM on June 8, 2016


Cotton's behavior was completely inexcusable and not at all justified by any sort of authentic principle.

When the article first popped, it looked like we were talking about more people than Cotton - who, given the nature of large groups, could, and might, have been motivated by principle. In the general course of events, more people mean to do good than mean to do bad. It might seem like nitpicking, but I truly think it's important to sort out people who are motivated by principle, versus people who are petty tyrants motivated by their personal vendettas, like Cotton. Deeply important.

And we're seeing that in the presidential race. It would be wrong to write off everyone who initially endorsed Trump as an unrepentant racist, for example - especially as we're seeing many who initially did so out of misguided loyalty principle switch or fail to endorse out of higher principles, such as "don't endorse a flaming racist."

Whether or not you hate everything they stand for, it is possible to work with principled people. It is possible to work with the Bushes. It is possible to work with the Romneys of the world. It is possible to work with people who believe in honor by appealing to their honor. But what can you appeal to, when it comes to pocket-lining or hatred?

In order to work with principled people, I think it's important to give them the credit of good faith, until they prove they are undeserving of it. I think it's important morally, but I also think it's important from a practical standpoint, because you can work with them if you are listening to them, but not if you're assuming from the get-go they are assholes.

I apologize for writing much shorter pieces above that did not explore this nuance - I was on my phone and being lazy, which doesn't always make for my best contributions.
posted by corb at 10:13 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


RE: The press release touting "Bernie or Bust" chants:

After DC goes to Clinton—which will most likely happen—will the campaign start using "Bern it down"? When will the doubling down end, and where will it take Sanders?

I do hold out hope that things will come together, but it's these small parts of the campaign's message that concern me.
posted by defenestration at 10:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am seriously getting into fuck Sanders territory. I don't really care if he wants to wait until DC or the convention but he needs to stop peddling bullshit victim narratives to people who are donating past the point that it hurts.

At this point I assume that he is holding on because he needs the DNC to promise to cover his campaign debt. I have heard reports that being in debt from running a campaign is a major fear of his and based upon his likely anemic may fundraising numbers he might be in the hole on his campaign.
posted by vuron at 10:20 AM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


Whether or not you hate everything they stand for, it is possible to work with principled people. It is possible to work with the Bushes. ... It is possible to work with people who believe in honor by appealing to their honor.

George W. Bush's path to the Republican nomination in 2000 was aided in the crucial South Carolina primary in part by a whispering campaign that John McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was an illegitimate product of an interracial affair.

In 2004, Bush's campaign benefited from a disgusting smear campaign that implied that John Kerry's war heroics were somehow fabricated.

Worst of all, Bush drummed up support for the war he wanted on Iraq by implying that Iraq was connected to al Qaeda, implying that it may have been involved in 9/11 and implying that it posed a threat against the United States; none of these were true.

Bush, at least, has given us ample evidence he lacked good faith. And honor. And he did so from the very beginning of his presidential campaign.
posted by Gelatin at 10:21 AM on June 8, 2016 [45 favorites]


There was an article floating around facebook a month or two ago about a disabled woman trying to work with the Sanders campaign on disabled rights and getting nowhere. She then (reluctantly) contacted the Clinton campaign and there were people instantly ready to work with her on policy issues. I think this showed just how unprepared for a truly national, truly universal campaign the Sanders campaign was. Momentum does not beat a solid organization and ground game. I think that the campaign grew organically to a larger size than anyone anticipated and that meant that there were plenty of policy and other spots that were just not addressed in time.
posted by Hactar at 10:25 AM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


I should add, though, that although I voted for Sanders in the Indiana primary, with every intention of proudly voting for Clinton in her historic general election victory, if Sanders keeps implying the primary process in general and Clinton in particular are somehow corrupt, I will hold his smears in the same contempt I do Bush's.

I can't decide if it's better or worse that he isn't hiding behind surrogates the way Bush did.
posted by Gelatin at 10:25 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


In order to work with principled people, I think it's important to give them the credit of good faith, until they prove they are undeserving of it.

The entirety of the Congressional GOP has given numerous reasons, both individually and collectively, as to why they should never be given the benefit of assuming they're operating on principles or in good faith. Cotton is just one of the more egregious examples (and a second of googling would give you dozens of times that he's pulled something similar), but there are entire major issues such as abortion and voting rights and domestic violence where they have proven, as a bloc, not to be trusted.

It is possible to work with people who believe in honor by appealing to their honor.

And yet we have John McCain proving that wrong before our very eyes.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:25 AM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


The thing is, I agree with Sanders. I think the whole political establishment is deeply corrupt; that the processes of governance at all stages -- from electing the politicians to writing the laws to deciding what gets passed through Congress and the rule-making and regulatory processes -- are dominated by the corporate interests that have the time, money and profit motive to ensure that their side gets the biggest voice at all these points. I think that Sanders, by virtue of his unique position as the longtime eccentric Rep/Senator from a weird little far-left state, is uniquely positioned to bring both an insider's view of the process and an outsider critique of the system.

And the man needs to stop now (in the next few days, at least) if he cares more about that goal than about his own ego. If there's one thing I've learned from Metafilter, it's that sometimes you just have to flag it and move on.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:29 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


The irony of a campaign that was built in no small part by attracting people frustrated at paying off massive student loan debts inured for degrees worth less than they thought they were worth now deceiving the same people into donating to a campaign with less than they thought it was worth... If Sanders needs to raise money to cover final campaign expenses and avoid going into personal debt, then he should be honest about that, not delude people into thinking he's going to win.
posted by zachlipton at 10:30 AM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


entire major issues such as abortion and voting rights and domestic violence where they have proven, as a bloc, not to be trusted.

Are there any issues where this is not the case? I can't name a single thing where operating under the assumption that Republicans are acting in good faith is defensible. They've so poisoned the well that the only rational response is to assume malevolence until unequivocally proven otherwise.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:33 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Trumperdämmerung:
GOP senators say party could still deny Trump the nomination: "'He's not our nominee yet,' Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said pointedly when asked about Trump and the current Supreme Court vacancy.... 'The rules committee is really not going to meet until right before the convention and they are maybe going to have a rule that is different than it is today,' said another GOP senator who declined to be named. 'As it is right now, I'm sure there are a lot of thoughts going on behind closed doors as to what they can do in establishing final rules for the convention.'"

Hugh Hewitt: GOP Must Dump Trump Or ‘Get Killed’ In Election: "Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt thinks the Republican Party must change its convention rules in order to choose a presidential nominee other than Donald Trump, or else face certain defeat in November. 'It’s like ignoring stage-four cancer. You can’t do it, you gotta go attack it,' Hewitt said on his show Wednesday. 'And right now the Republican Party is facing—the plane is headed towards the mountain after the last 72 hours.'"

Top GOP Rep. Says He Can No Longer Support Trump After Judge Attacks: "One of the House's top conservatives now says he cannot support presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump after the real estate mogul questioned whether a federal judge could be fair given his 'Mexican heritage,' according to CNN political reporter Manu Raju."
And of course there was the Mark Kirk thing yesterday, already discussed.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 10:34 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


When the article first popped, it looked like we were talking about more people than Cotton - who, given the nature of large groups, could, and might, have been motivated by principle. In the general course of events, more people mean to do good than mean to do bad. It might seem like nitpicking, but I truly think it's important to sort out people who are motivated by principle, versus people who are petty tyrants motivated by their personal vendettas, like Cotton. Deeply important.

I am sure that, to the people who lay down with dogs, it is deeply important for them to be able to point and say no, no - I didn't have these fleas before that mutt over there gave them to me. To the rest of us, living with the vermin brought in along with the anti-equality shutdown-enabling witchhunt-committe-running... we really don't give a shit. We're just knowing the collective by the company they keep.
posted by phearlez at 10:36 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


especially as we're seeing many who initially did so out of misguided loyalty principle switch or fail to endorse out of higher principles, such as "don't endorse a flaming racist."

I'm forced to question the applicability of the term "many." Mark Kirk, running in a hotly contested re-election campaign against Tammy Duckworth, publicly withdrew his endorsement.

Many other Republicans are playing footsie with weasel words like "support, but not endorse." It actually isn't good faith to imply that one condemns Trumps's racism while still hitchhing oneself to his coattails.
posted by Gelatin at 10:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


they are maybe going to have a rule that is different than it is today

Like taking the nomination away from the guy who got the most delegates and won the most states? Nope, this is the candidate you chose.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:37 AM on June 8, 2016


(On lack of preview, there's Bill Flores' withdrawal of support as well. So, two.)
posted by Gelatin at 10:38 AM on June 8, 2016


Just imagine for a second if, during the RNC, they actually did rules-lawyer the nomination away from Trump. How many days before they'd have to send the National Guard into Cleveland?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:39 AM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


The entirety of the Congressional GOP has given numerous reasons, both individually and collectively, as to why they should never be given the benefit of assuming they're operating on principles or in good faith.

Anytime you are talking about that large a bloc of people, you are probably wrong, whether you are calling them saints or sinners. Look, I've done it too. It's tempting to use that kind of shorthand and write them off, so you don't have to do the hard work of figuring out who opposes something because they're an asshole, and who opposes something because they have principles that come in conflict. But it's not good for being accurate and it's not good for America.

We can't burn it down, or secede, or go it alone, without a terrible intervening period of violence. Thus, living here requires that we find some way to get along with and persuade the people who have good hearts, to look at where they are coming from and show them where we are.
posted by corb at 10:40 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


That's from a different era though. Look at the 2012 Romney map. Which of the red states can you realistically see Trump losing?

In addition to all the states Blasdelb mentioned above, Trump's candidacy is potentially putting Utah into play, especially if there is a concerted effort by a conservative third party.
posted by palindromic at 10:43 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


How many days before they'd have to send the National Guard into Cleveland?

Zero. The real question is how many days before they could withdraw them.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:43 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Could the rules committee make a rule that requires the nominee to publicly release their tax returns, say four years worth? They don't have to block him, the other option is to make him want to take his ball and go home.
posted by peeedro at 10:43 AM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


On the unendorsements: Lindsey Graham is probably the biggest one, and he's calling on other Republicans to unendorse as well.
posted by corb at 10:44 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's probably also worth noting that, regardless of one's feelings about Republicans in the Senate and House, many of whom have repeatedly demonstrated qualities I hold in the deepest contempt, one should certainly consider giving the benefit of the doubt to actual, individual Republican voters. I know many of the latter who are decent, well-intentioned human beings with whom I happen to have (often quite deep) political differences.
posted by dersins at 10:46 AM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


That time a congressional candidate got served with a lawsuit — at his own victory party:
On the same night a California state senator celebrated his primary win for an open Los Angeles-area congressional seat Tuesday, he also got served with a lawsuit.

CBS Los Angeles's Jeff Nguyen was at state Sen. Isadore Hall's (D) victory party when a process server (literally the person who hands a lawsuit directly to a defendant) arrived.
posted by zachlipton at 10:46 AM on June 8, 2016


Most Republicans going to the national convention might be true believers of a sort but they also have a decent amount to lose which would probably preclude violence at the convention but I could totally see a lot of real sketchy types going full militia if the party blocks Trump as nominee.

But on the other hand Trump is not pivoting to the center and is instead doubling down on batshit which could go all the way into Speaker Pelosi territory which would be catastrophic for Republicans.
posted by vuron at 10:48 AM on June 8, 2016


corb, the problem is that since Obama was inaugurated, the Republican Party adopted a deliberate strategy of opposition, choosing to eschew shared accomplishments in the name of denying Obama victories he could point to in his re-election campaign.

Not a single Republican voted for the ACA, despite the likes of Olympia Snowe extracting concessions by pretending she might.

Republicans who might have been interested in compromise were primaried from the right, like Indiana's Dick Lugar, whose hand I've shaken and for whom I've voted in the past.

Ted Cruz bragged on the campaign trail about shutting the government down over a risky and doomed scheme to default on the United States national debt.

Moreover, John Boehner lost his speakership because he was perceived as not standing up enough against Obama, for crying out loud, even though he chose not to pass some bills with certain majorities because they would have meant forming a coalition with Democrats in violation of a mythical thing called the "Hastert Rule" (which isn't codified anywhere, merely a declaration that Republicans will only accept Republican principles in the laws they pass.

And I haven't even mentioned Bush v Gore as an act of bad faith, even though the conservative justices who put Bush in the Whote House gave away the game by declaring it shouldn't be used as a precedent.

Not to mention all the stuff I mentioned before. We know the Republicans in Congress and the SCOTUS aren't acting in good faith, and aren't interested in compromise, because they've told us so. They campaign on it. Where's the willingness to compromise, I ask you?
posted by Gelatin at 10:51 AM on June 8, 2016 [48 favorites]


On the unendorsements: Lindsey Graham is probably the biggest one, and he's calling on other Republicans to unendorse as well.

All right, three. We'll see how many Republican congresspeople, senators, governors, and other elected officials follow suit.

And how many choose not to.
posted by Gelatin at 10:52 AM on June 8, 2016


For those who are interested in the wonky shit, as Trump cranks up his horribleness, the Cruz campaign's lock on no-rebellion is really starting to shift. The NJ state chair, Steve Lonagan, is now calling for a full delegate rebellion - while other state chairs, like mine, try to hold firm and are trying to prevent information on delegate rebellion from being shared.
posted by corb at 10:52 AM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


"Crony"? They went to Harvard Law School at the same time.

Cronyism among Harvard alums? I find that hard to believe. (kidding)
posted by Drinky Die at 10:53 AM on June 8, 2016


The NJ state chair, Steve Lonagan, is now calling for a full delegate rebellion - while other state chairs, like mine, try to hold firm and are trying to prevent information on delegate rebellion from being shared.

Didn't Kasich come in second in NJ?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:54 AM on June 8, 2016


The Fix: "We narrowed Trump’s vice-presidential possibilities to 35. Now you pick one." Their top 5:
  1. Newt Gingrich
  2. Mary Fallin
  3. Chris Christie
  4. Bob Corker
  5. Joni Ernst
"We narrowed Clinton’s vice-presidential possibilities to 27. Now you pick one." Their top 5:
  1. Julian Castro
  2. Sherrod Brown
  3. Timothy Kaine
  4. Thomas Perez
  5. Amy Klobuchar
posted by kirkaracha at 10:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


corb: As always, the inside scope one the RNC vis-a-vis the "Trump situation" is much appreciated.
posted by defenestration at 10:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [23 favorites]


It's probably also worth noting that, regardless of one's feelings about Republicans in the Senate and House, many of whom have repeatedly demonstrated qualities I hold in the deepest contempt, one should certainly consider giving the benefit of the doubt to actual, individual Republican voters.

I agree, and I want to make absolutely clear that in my several recent comments, I'm talking about Republicans in government -- the sort who do things like pass voting restrictions aimed at reducing their opposition's ability to vote at all -- as demonstrating, over and over, that they lack good faith and trustworthiness.
posted by Gelatin at 10:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Thus, living here requires that we find some way to get along with and persuade the people who have good hearts, to look at where they are coming from and show them where we are.

It is literally the actual job of these theoretical good principled people in the Senate to work with asshats like Cotton and persuade him and show him and blah blah blah. The fact that they let him get away with that hold for two years -- and would still be doing it today if she weren't dead -- puts some of that evil on them, Ricky Bobby.
posted by Etrigan at 10:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Speaker Pelosi territory

OH MY GOD. I somehow forgot that if Democrats are able to take back the House it will be Nancy & Hillary, makin' the laws and carryin' them out.

The cleaning crew at the Capitol will need more head-explosion-cleaning-solution for all the conservative heads that will be exploding.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:56 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


corb: since you have such an interesting perspective on all this, how do you see things playing out IF there is a delegate coup at the RNC? I mean, wow, that would be amazing and dramatic and it would make for the best television since the last season of Breaking Bad but ... well, but then what? What would happen after the smash and grab?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:56 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]




A hundred years ago folks warned against female suffrage. They said that if you let women vote and run for office, you'll end up with presidential candidates who are labile, confused, hysterical, and frankly an embarrassment to the political offices they seek.

But enough about Trump! Congratulations on almost certainly having a woman as your next president. Tis good no matter what.
posted by Emma May Smith at 10:58 AM on June 8, 2016 [57 favorites]


Didn't Kasich come in second in NJ?

Kasich's long game finally reveals itself.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:59 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


What would happen after the smash and grab?

Have you seen any of the 'Mad Max' movies?
posted by delfin at 11:00 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Can we add a clause to the Hastert Rule that mentions that he is a child molesting pile of garbage so take that into account when applying it?
posted by beerperson at 11:01 AM on June 8, 2016 [37 favorites]


It's tempting to use that kind of shorthand and write them off, so you don't have to do the hard work of figuring out who opposes something because they're an asshole, and who opposes something because they have principles that come in conflict.

Sometimes it's their principles that make them assholes. Not all principles are created equal. Trump's principle is that Latinos should be denied things because they're Latinos. What bright-line rule distinguishes that principle from the "principle" that Obama should never be allowed to govern?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:03 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Have you seen any of the 'Mad Max' movies?

I'm now envisioning the Republican convention as being like the end of The Road Warrior, except with Trump standing next to the overturned tanker as the final shot.
posted by nubs at 11:03 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


"built largely on the premise that the party is hopelessly corrupt and he's the only one with any integrity among them, despite their rigging the odds against him. That message of self-righteousness and conspiracy has been getting louder and angrier"

This is what makes me really nervous, and I'm a long-time opponent of liberal circular firing squads for this reason. The GOP has spent 30 years saying that government doesn't work, it can't work, that compromise is selling out, that they have to be morally pure -- and because government doesn't work without compromise, they end up spawning a Tea Party who rightly call them on the distance between their rejection of compromise and their actual compromises (and/or their inability to get anything done because they reject compromise) and try to put in place representatives who are MORE pure ... a handful of whom get to Washington and discover you actually have to compromise to get anything done, and are promptly eaten by the Tea Party, and now any GOP representative who tries to do ANYTHING gets primaried from the right.

In a modern, pluralistic democracy, especially one as large as the US, you don't get YOUR agenda. You get incremental pieces of your agenda, maybe 60% or 80% of it if you're lucky, and that's a win. When Sanders talks about how compromise is corrupt and selling out, and how processes designed to facilitate compromise are rigged, that looks to me like the start of the same path the Tea Party went down, and it doesn't end anywhere good for the left. Big idealistic speeches and goals, I am 100% on board. Shouting corruption because people only get 60% of that idealistic agenda and have to horse trade to do it? That I start to have a real problem with. That's how you eat your young and disable your party and hobble your agenda, by ensuring that nobody can make any incremental progress and that anybody who is actually effective at functioning in a pluralistic democracy is removed. I don't want to endumben the left that way.

There's so much path dependence in politics, especially in a country this big, where you change the status quo by tweaking the status quo, because overthrowing it all at once is next to impossible. And there's so much that gets done by understanding the levers of power that are easier to move, via the bureaucracy or by framing the debate. By creating new normals, by winning small victories that pave the way for larger ones, by proving your ideas at the state level. Especially with a hostile Congress, forward motion from the presidency is going to come from those small things executed cleverly, rather than from sweeping agendas, and -- if we're very lucky -- from a House GOP that's willing to compromise from time to time and pass "good enough" bills that at least move the football forward. (I think Paul Ryan understands how the party cuts its own throat by refusing "grand bargains" and a lot of his rhetoric is geared towards enabling GOP reps to vote for things now and then instead of being the Party of No. I don't know if he can move that needle, though.)

Anyway, I dislike it when people complain about the legitimacy of the PROCESS, or the legitimacy of compromise-qua-compromise, because we only have a democracy if we can respect the legitimacy of a process by which we sometimes lose (and it sucks), and we only have a functioning government if we can come to okay compromises. And I don't like it when elected officials go out of their way to undermine either of those two things. (And that's why people are so wound up about Trump and the judge -- he's attacking the legitimacy of the process by which we settle disputes, and while the GOP may be okay with attacking the process by which we make laws, they're not okay with attacking the judiciary's legitimacy so blatantly.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:04 AM on June 8, 2016 [91 favorites]


the "child-molesting-pile-of-garbage-Hastert-Rule" it is!
posted by mikelieman at 11:06 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]




It's probably also worth noting that, regardless of one's feelings about Republicans in the Senate and House, many of whom have repeatedly demonstrated qualities I hold in the deepest contempt, one should certainly consider giving the benefit of the doubt to actual, individual Republican voters.

I'm no partisan; even now, having not cast a vote for a republican candidate in over 16 years, I still think of myself as an independent and wish we'd have a viable second party. But my benefit of the doubt only extends so far as thinking that perhaps people voting for candidates like Cotton or Trump have some particular important issue they're deciding on. It does not extend so far as to free them from my thinking "they're making a choice that says it's okay for these negative repercussions" and "they seem to care a lot about this now, but somehow were totally cool with these things before we had this particular leadership."

And for the most part, when we're talking about a group of folks as crap and the 113th and 114th congress or Trump supporters, I'm going to apply the same standard that I do when someone wants me to expend effort on well wait is there an interpretation of that which isn't racist? No, sorry. Do your own apologia. I see a mob whose loudest voices are saying repellent things, filled with people who aren't walking away or speaking out, I assume everything inside the perimeter is tainted.

Can we add a clause to the Hastert Rule that mentions that he is a child molesting pile of garbage so take that into account when applying it?

I think they considered renaming it the Kid Molester Rule but that wasn't sufficiently specific about which congressman originated it.
posted by phearlez at 11:08 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


The rule-changing at the convention is interesting. Per corb's previous posts, a fair number of the 'Trump' delegates are actually Cruz delegates because Trump didn't have much organization. But Trump's is at +300 in a contest that only requires a bit more than 1200 to win. So exactly how bad was the organization? Bad enough that a full fifth of their delegates don't really believe in him? And there's also the issue of money -- it's an expensive trip, and from most reports the Trump campaign is about out of money.

And then of course there's the issue that most of the party establishment really kind of hates Ted Cruz, who is the only other player with a substantial block of pledged delegates and apparently a fair number of crypto-delegates.

I'm pretty sure what the party powers would like is to switch in Ryan or someone like him, but it's hard to see that not getting ugly. Trump true believers feeling they've been cheated (and well, they kinda would be), Cruz furiously determined not to let Ryan jump ahead of him in the queue... I know Republicans are the 'fall in line' party but there might be a limit. On the other hand Cruz is young enough that a run in 4 or 8 years is still viable, so maybe they think they have enough to bargain with him.
posted by tavella at 11:10 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Slim majority say Trump's comments about judge's Mexican heritage were "racist"

The charts on this one are important.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:10 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sometimes it's their principles that make them assholes.

It's worth pointing out that though they're fond of complaining about the deficit whenever (and only whenever) a Democrat is in the White House, and despite the unmitigated disaster voodoo economics have brought to places like Kansas, one firm Republicans principle is that they won't even consider a tax increase. And that goes back at least to George H. W. Bush, an incumbent president who lost his re-election bid in part because he reneged on a pledge never to raise taxes.
posted by Gelatin at 11:10 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I believe that the major party vice-presidential nominations are made by the convention delegates as well. Typically, this is just a rubber-stamp of the presidential nominee's VP choice. But I could see the RNC denying Trump's VP choice as a deliberate slap in the face (and/or an attempt to appease "establishment" Republican voters), if they didn't want to go to the extreme step of denying Trump the nomination via rules-lawyering.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:12 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


"We narrowed Clinton’s vice-presidential possibilities to 27. Now you pick one."

I am currently pulling for Thomas Perez for HRC's VP pick. The recent increase in salary threshold for exempting salaried employees he oversaw as Secretary of Labor is a fine piece of populist economics that will directly benefit many working- and middle-class folks, and having that kind of policy-maker on the ticket might help demonstrate Clinton's commitment to those issues (and to maintaining Obama's legacy). Also, I am in favor of the Democratic VP pick not coming from the Senate so as to maintain as many Democratic seats as possible.
posted by palindromic at 11:12 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


The GOP has spent 30 years saying that government doesn't work, it can't work, that compromise is selling out, that they have to be morally pure -- and because government doesn't work without compromise, they end up spawning a Tea Party who rightly call them on the distance between their rejection of compromise and their actual compromises

Time once again for me to point out that P.J. O'Rourke -- a conservative gadfly -- described the Republican Party as "the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." And he said that way back in 1991.
posted by Gelatin at 11:13 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


I'm pretty sure what the party powers would like is to switch in Ryan or someone like him, but it's hard to see that not getting ugly. Trump true believers feeling they've been cheated (and well, they kinda would be)

In what way would they kinda not be?
posted by phearlez at 11:13 AM on June 8, 2016


Brilliant comment, Eyebrows McGee.

I think Paul Ryan understands how the party cuts its own throat by refusing "grand bargains" and a lot of his rhetoric is geared towards enabling GOP reps to vote for things now and then instead of being the Party of No.

It's interesting, as I pointed out upthread, that the principle Ryan seems to think he can unite congressional Republicans behind is repealing restrictions on the banking sector passed in the wake of the Great Recession, including the prohibition on using other people's money to play the stock market.

Given the widespread perception that in the wake of the bank collapse, banks got bailed out while Main Street got the shaft, it's interesting that Ryan seems to think doing a favor for Big Banking is a positive agenda worth rallying around and not a risk of annoying the populist wing of the Republican constituency.
posted by Gelatin at 11:19 AM on June 8, 2016


the republicans have to give trump the nomination if they want any kind of viability in the future - by dumping trump, they'll lose a sizable percentage of their base for years - of course, they will lose another portion of their base this year if he remains the candidate, but they might be forgiven for that in the future
posted by pyramid termite at 11:19 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]




(It'd also be interesting if an enterprising member of the political press -- ha, ha! -- would ask Trump if he'd sign Ryan's bank regulation repeal bill.)
posted by Gelatin at 11:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Trump true believers feeling they've been cheated (and well, they kinda would be)
In what way would they kinda not be?

The Republican Party is on record that there are a lot of people who don't deserve the Right to Vote. Now, they must come to the realization that some of them are Republicans.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


There's also the issue of what Trump can do to them if he was replaced. He'd never forgive, never shut up, and be on TV all day, every day whipping his scorned brownshirts into a frenzy. Who knows what that turns into, but it certainly wouldn't be a Republican victory for non-Trump-to-be-named-later.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:22 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Republicans have to tack to the left on a ton of issues if they want to be able to win the presidency.

Demographics are going to screw them unless they manage to win over Latino voters and I am sorry most Latinos are not single issue enough to go for Republicans exclusively based upon abortion as an issue.
posted by vuron at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


phearlez: In what way would they kinda not be?

In the most technical sense, in that the party has allowed there to be an option to change the rules in the middle of the game, and that this option existed before Trump hove into view. But certainly in all other senses, yes, cheated.
posted by tavella at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, the Republicans are pretty fucked either way. It's been great fun watching them struggle with it.
posted by ryanrs at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow, I'm literally on a phone call getting my gofundme threatened to get me in line. "I know you don't have your fundraising done...Republican donors might want to have their donations returned if you keep this #nevertrump shit up". Fortunately, they don't know that a lot of my contributions are from #nevertrumpers, some of whom don't even vote Republican! This is getting insane.
posted by corb at 11:23 AM on June 8, 2016 [54 favorites]


The Republicans are in a no-win scenario of their own creation here. They passed all the reasonable exits five hundred miles ago. Trump had enough history of shit that he never should have been allowed on the debate stage in the first place. I honestly don't even know where to begin with if it would be worse to dump Trump or stick with him, but my instinct says that if dumping Trump is ever an option, in life or politics or anything, it should always be the option you take.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:24 AM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Not a single Republican voted for the ACA, despite the likes of Olympia Snowe extracting concessions by pretending she might.

Olympia Snowe helped the Democrats invoke cloture on the ACA despite voting no giving it an up or down vote. The Blue Dog Democrats are the assholes that killed the public option.

2009 was a really difficult year for Rockefeller Republicans. They had to play an unbelievably difficult political game or risk their seat being primaried and going to an absolute fucking nutjob.
posted by Talez at 11:24 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sara Jerde: Grassley Compares Trump Judge Attacks To Sotomayor's 'Wise Latina' Remark
"I think that you don't have any more trouble with what Trump said than when Sotomayor said that -- when she was found saying in speeches that, quote, 'a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male,'" Grassley said. "I don't hear any criticism of that sort of comment by as justice of the Supreme Court."
Andrew Kaczynski: Rep. Duncan Hunter Compares Judge Curiel To An Iraqi-American Judging Chris Kyle
“What I like to do is take these arguments out to there logical extremes,” Hunter said on Sean Hannity’s radio program. “So let’s say that Chris Kyle, the American sniper, is still alive and he was on trial for something, and his judge was a Muslim-American of Iraqi descent. Here you have Chris Kyle, who’s killed a whole bunch of bad guys in Iraq. Would that be a fair trial for Chris Kyle? If you had that judge there? Probably not. And Chris Kyle could probably say, ‘this guy’s not gonna like me.’”
posted by zombieflanders at 11:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


AFAICT, the best thing for the Republicans would be if Trump gets indicted or suffers a health crisis. It's basically the only way they can get rid of him without having a large fraction of their base riot.
posted by jackbishop at 11:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Anyway, I dislike it when people complain about the legitimacy of the PROCESS, or the legitimacy of compromise-qua-compromise, because we only have a democracy if we can respect the legitimacy of a process by which we sometimes lose (and it sucks), and we only have a functioning government if we can come to okay compromises."

I object to the status quo insofar as bills regulating particular industries are often written by them, leading to situations in which "compromise" is rendered irrelevant when both political parties are courted by the same interests. Politics have been phrased as big banks on the left and big oil on the right in past years, but I think now we're getting to the point where it's really just big business paying for consideration while social issues are exploited to force party unity.

But of course it is disingenuous to say that the left and right are the same. The voters are quite different and nearly every person not in the fuck-you-got-mine class would stand to lose in a Trump presidency. So I'll vote for Clinton, an extremely adept politician--despite my personal belief that we need people who can say no to lobbyists and speaking fees, and certainly not master triangulators.

Of course, there's no way I can out myself as a Clinton voter on Facebook without losing a chunk of family and disappointing the rest. But to be clear, I couldn't out myself as a Sanders voter without losing family, either.
posted by Phyltre at 11:27 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Wow, I'm literally on a phone call getting my gofundme threatened to get me in line. "I know you don't have your fundraising done...Republican donors might want to have their donations returned if you keep this #nevertrump shit up".

Holy shit, corb. Damn! Keep up the good fight!
posted by Anonymous at 11:31 AM on June 8, 2016




Olympia Snowe helped the Democrats invoke cloture on the ACA despite voting no giving it an up or down vote.

No she didn't. She did help vote the bill out of committee.

The Blue Dog Democrats are the assholes that killed the public option.

I'll go farther than that and name names; a public option was off the table as long as Obama needed Joe Lieberman's vote, and he did. But Lieberman was an independent at the time, though he caucused with the Democrats.

My point stands that not one Republican voted for the final bill, a deliberate strategy intended to deny Obama any claim that the legislature was "bipartisan."
posted by Gelatin at 11:37 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


So, ideally, we would have black defendants tried solely by black judges, gay defendants by gay judges, Muslim defendants by Muslim judges, poor defendants by poor judges, spray-tanned defendants by spray-tanned judges, etc. This actually sounds like a fantastic idea. The Trump Rule, we could call it. Go Trump! Go Grassley! Let's do this!
posted by Spathe Cadet at 11:38 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Lets not kid ourselves, The Trump rule is that old white men with the right political history and a bill-fold sized dent in their palms get to judge everyone.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:40 AM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


If Hillary is elected and the Democrats take back the House.

Hillary Clinton, president.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.

And whether or not Democrats take back the Senate:
Dianne Feinstein second most senior Democratic member of the Senate.
Patty Murray, if re-elected, third.
(Barbara Mikulski is retiring or else she would have been second.)
Pat Leahy is in first place.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


maybe this is Trump's plan to create jobs. for every citizen, a doppelganger fit to judge them
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Trump Rule is that, if you land on Free Parking, you get to name a railroad after yourself.
posted by box at 11:41 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Can we talk more about Trump and Qaddafi, because this story is crazy:
To review: Trump eagerly invites a dictator onto his own property in exchange for some of that dictator’s cash and a chance at future business access, allowing the dictator’s people to effectively take over part of his property and spend two weeks setting up shop. The town finds out and says, "Nope," scuppering the deal. Then Trump takes credit for driving the dictator away.
The best part though is Trump trying to shake down Qaddafi's PR firm for more money and a meeting with the guy:
Later, when Trump asked to meet with Qaddafi, he demanded an additional $50,000 for the tent-related troubles, Herbert said, but Qaddafi’s representatives refused to pay extra.

“Had a rough talk with trump org and said it was an insult to shake us down for 50k more and ask for a meeting,” another Brown Lloyd James employee wrote in an email obtained by BuzzFeed News. “The 150k for a few weeks rent is more than enough s ecurity [sic], go fuck self, etc. She says she’s talking to trump and will get back to me or have him call.
posted by zachlipton at 11:42 AM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Dianne Feinstein second most senior Democratic member of the Senate.

Unfortunately, and I'm not remotely happy about this as someone who has been represented by Feinstein almost my entire life, this isn't such a plus.
posted by zachlipton at 11:45 AM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


No she didn't. She did help vote the bill out of committee.

My bad. She did only get it out of committee. But she did vote yes on the stimulus, no against the partial birth abortion ban, no against a same sex marriage amendment, she also voted yes on Dodd-Frank, and she voted to confirm both Sotomayor and Kagan.
posted by Talez at 11:46 AM on June 8, 2016


To call the coming Republican National Convention in Cleveland a shit show is an understatement. It’s an abomination. Imagine the Gathering of the Juggalos and a self-help seminar for thousands of Patrick Batemans, all in celebration of a reality TV show host nominee with 100% name recognition and a Nazi bend. You get the picture. The bully has reached the pulpit.

Say, uh, America? Cleveland here.

If we get to pick which insane clown posse should visit --

Send us the Juggalos.
 
posted by Herodios at 11:47 AM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


Send us the Juggalos.

Fucking superdelegates how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a political scientist
Y'all motherfuckers talk about the popular vote, pledged delegate count
and getting me pissed
posted by Talez at 11:49 AM on June 8, 2016 [23 favorites]


Miracles is a good song I don't care what anybody says.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:50 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


If Hillary is elected and the Democrats take back the House.

What? Dems need to pick up 30 seats for that to happen, when only 18 are rated as "toss ups". I guess it could turn into an anti-Trump wave, but that's what it would take, as they need to essentially sweep every remotely competitive House race and several that are heavily favored for the Republican.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


So, ideally, we would have black defendants tried solely by black judges, gay defendants by gay judges, Muslim defendants by Muslim judges, poor defendants by poor judges, spray-tanned defendants by spray-tanned judges, etc. This actually sounds like a fantastic idea. The Trump Rule, we could call it. Go Trump! Go Grassley! Let's do this!

Welcome to Night Vale did something like this recently -- the trial of Hiram McDaniels, Literal Five-Headed Dragon, wasn't considered to have a jury of his peers unless there was a five-headed dragon on the jury. Since none were available to serve who were not related to Hiram, they crafted a computer AI to simulate a five-headed dragon juror's responses.

Adopting the Night Vale election method would be smart for America to do, as the official uniform of Night Vale election officials (a plague doctor mask, an off-brand Snuggie, and stilts) would lend the process some much-needed dignity.
posted by delfin at 11:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I dunno, I think there's a good chance that, as opposition research unearths more and more disgusting wriggly worms from Trump's history, and as HRC and her surrogates needle him more directly, and as the press continue to dare to ask questions, I think Trump may well realize that he doesn't really want this anyway.

In particular, in a situation where he figures out (finally) that he cannot win, I think he may just walk away. As the link upthread said (sorry, I forget when it was posted), better to be a quitter than a loser.

I would love to see this happen in, say, late September. That would be awesome.
posted by suelac at 11:55 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


What? Dems need to pick up 30 seats for that to happen, when only 18 are rated as "toss ups". I guess it could turn into an anti-Trump wave, but that's what it would take, as they need to essentially sweep every remotely competitive House race and several that are heavily favored for the Republican.

It's a good thing that progressives thronged to the 2010 mid term elections to stop all that gerrymandering shit from going down in the states.
posted by Talez at 11:56 AM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


Scalzi:
Donald Trump is manifestly the worst and least-prepared major presidential candidate in modern history, and unlike some previous GOP presidents who come to mind, he’s not nearly tractable enough to be managed by a cadre of presumably more-engaged minders. He’s the walking manifestation of Dunning-Kruger, a racist and an increasingly-dangerous blowhard, and the fact the GOP is under the delusion they’re going to somehow keep him in line should fill every thinking human with terror (the GOP doesn’t really think they’ll be able to keep him in line, incidentally. They just need to convince you they can do it). As a practical matter, if you don’t want a President Trump — and I don’t — then Clinton’s your gal.
posted by palindromic at 11:57 AM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


I feel so terrible for Cleveland. The city itself is overwhelmingly Democratic so I can't imagine too many residents are happy about this tire fire being located in their fair city.
posted by octothorpe at 12:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, my previously mentioned Republican crook Darrell Issa, in a VERY safe district with one opponent, a Democrat, only got 51.1%... over 10 points less than he's used to. Unfortunately, because of California's Primary System, 50%+1 was enough to re-elect him without coming back in November, but if somebody with his longevity (and his MONEY), could be backed to the edge after openly endorsing Trump, I think we cannot underestimate The Donald's toxicity to the Republican Brand.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:04 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]




Scalzi

You forgot MeFi's own!
posted by Gelatin at 12:05 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Keep up the good fight!

Thanks! They can't really do much to me other than incredibly insulting and condescending calls I don't /think/ - I guess they can keep me out of the fundraisers they're holding and stuff, but it looks like, thanks to a lot of help (including some of you guys) I'll be able to get my registration fee paid, and after that they can't kick me out and I will fucking hitchhike to Cleveland if I have to to fight this fucker and his racist, fascist, bullshit. And frankly, I don't give a damn if that makes some of the Trump voters not want to vote for Cruz in 2020 after that.

For those of you interested in delegate rebellion news: this place seems to be trying to organize a delegate walkout of bound Trump delegates to lose quorum until the next votes come in.
posted by corb at 12:07 PM on June 8, 2016 [32 favorites]


Yes I think we can safely say this is the death of the Cookie Bake-off, however I do think it would have been funny to see Bill and Melania go toe-to-toe because I seriously doubt either one of them has ever baked a cookie in their life.

There was an article floating around facebook a month or two ago about a disabled woman trying to work with the Sanders campaign on disabled rights and getting nowhere. She then (reluctantly) contacted the Clinton campaign and there were people instantly ready to work with her on policy issues. I think this showed just how unprepared for a truly national, truly universal campaign the Sanders campaign was. Momentum does not beat a solid organization and ground game. I think that the campaign grew organically to a larger size than anyone anticipated and that meant that there were plenty of policy and other spots that were just not addressed in time.
posted by Hactar at 1:25 PM on June 8

I think you mean this article: Berned by Bernie Sanders
I began contacting the campaign as early as the fall to advise them on their disability outreach failures, as well as to communicate grave concerns the community was having with some on his policies. I tried every possible method of communication from emailing the campaign through the website and contacting them through social media, to direct emails and text messages to top political directors, including Jeff Weaver, BEGGING them to respond. I also discovered that I was not the only disability activist experiencing this very frustration with the campaign.[snip]
I told a Hillary supporter with a disability that I was now considering supporting Hillary. He immediately introduced me via email to a blind Clinton staffer. Within literally minutes, she emailed me at 9 p.m. saying she would like to speak to me about the campaign. I was so encouraged by how quickly they responded, after the months I was ignored by Bernie.
Of course she never bothered contacting the Trump campaign because not only does he never address the issues faced by the disabled, he infamously mocked a disabled journalist.

On the same issue is this Huffington Post piece: Why I Support Hillary: A Disabled Woman's Perspective
Unlike Sanders (who has admittedly mentioned the disability community on occasion), Clinton regularly discusses disability rights in her speeches. Even during her Super Tuesday speech, she mentioned fighting for the rights of people with disabilities! More importantly, she engages with disability leaders and the broad disability community for advice on how to address our issues. For example, Clinton’s autism plan was the result of significant discussions with the autistic community. In contrast, I am unaware of any similar conversations between the disability community and the Sanders campaign.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:11 PM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


I think Trump may well realize that he doesn't really want this anyway.

That was my hypothesis during this whole primary - that after a certain point Trump was angling to lose a contested convention so that he would a) not have to run for president, and b) be able to claim that he was cheated out of his rightful prize. Since he doesn't give a shit about the GOP or the damage his followers would do, and has already generated a list of new marks for whatever money-making scheme he next stumbled onto, it would have been a win-win for him.

I think his total lack of ground game, campaign funding, and so on are signals that he is not too invested in winning the general. Presidents don't get paid nearly enough, and the work would preclude too much personally-enriching flim-flammery for four whole years. He needs a way to lose that he can blame entirely on the bad faith of others in order for the scam to work.
posted by palindromic at 12:12 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


Charles Pierce: The Real Reason Bernie Sanders Needs to Get on Board with Hillary. He can take his time about it—up until the convention.​ But it's not an "if."

ugh I dunno why I even bother writing comments when Charles Pierce says what I want to say better and more succinctly:
[Hillary Clinton] never will be my ideal candidate. She wasn't in 2008 and she wasn't this year. Her foreign policy is too hawkish and I do dread the possibility that she will listen to the deadening rhetoric of centrist "inclusion." The Wall Street money is a problem, and she still has too much of a sweet-tooth for New Democrat solutions that are simply old Republican ideas in sheep's clothing.

Three people stood on the stage Tuesday night. Three people delivered speeches. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the only president out there.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:16 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


Charles Pierce is still wrong, though. Sanders should not wait the seven weeks until the convention, or however long it is.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


I can't imagine he will stay in much longer, after losing in California.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:22 PM on June 8, 2016


I have been celebrating this with my mom, a private Facebook group for Clinton-supporters, and a few select friends who I know are with her. Unfortunately a great deal of my Facebook is full of Clinton-haters, including the private feminist group where celebrating the first female nominee is not allowed (all pro-Clinton posts turn into Clinton-hate) and way too many of the the women are darkly alluding that Clinton and Trump will be no different. These include queer and POC women. It is depressing.
posted by Anonymous at 12:22 PM on June 8, 2016


I think Trump may well realize that he doesn't really want this anyway.

I think you are forgetting the enormous albatross around his neck-- mainly his fierce narcissism. As long as his ego keeps plugging his ears so that he is incapable of hearing any negative news, the TRUMP will believe the Golden Peach is within his grasp. I picture him dreaming of the new upgrades to the White House and Air Force One as well as designing the classy uniform He, TRUMP, will wear when addressing the troops (hint: Gold Braid and red sash with a white suit) when he is not plotting the torturous ways he will bring his enemies to their knees.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:26 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


way too many of the the women are darkly alluding that Clinton and Trump will be no different.

It just occurred to me, Trump has shown little respect for political norms and traditions so far, so I doubt he'll observe the custom of having the loser of a presidential election keep a low profile and refrain from comment on the victor.

And that can be a good thing, as it'd leave little reason to believe that however good a president Clinton turns out to be, Trump would have been just the same! Maybe better!
posted by Gelatin at 12:26 PM on June 8, 2016


Michael C. Bender and Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: “Trump Says ‘No Reason’ to Raise $1 Billion for Campaign” Let Trump be Trump.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:28 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I haven't been able to out myself as an actual Clinton supporter, not just an opponent of Trump.

There's something I've been meaning to ask: The President of the US is the head of the US establishment, and among the heads of the global establishment. Why is there any serious expectation that someone who is anti-establishment would get the job, and more importantly, be able to be in the job and remain anti-establishment?
posted by bardophile at 12:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]




If Trump quits, Jeb Bush needs to be put on suicide watch.
posted by PenDevil at 12:36 PM on June 8, 2016


Interestingly, Trump also says he does "not intend to comment on this matter [Trump U and Judge Curiel] any further." Are we taking bets on how long that promise will last?

If you bet "less than 24 hours,' ding ding ding you're a winner:
Trump also spoke at length about his controversial real-estate program, Trump University, despite a lengthy statement a day earlier in which he said he did "not intend to comment on this matter any further." He continued to insist that he's been treated unfairly in the case, and pointed to positive reviews of the school. "Another said, 'I went to Harvard and this was better,'" Trump said. He declined say whether he agreed or disagreed with that assessment, adding, "The experience was very good for a lot of people."

But, unlike previous interviews on the subject, he didn't turn to personal attacks against federal judge Gonzalo Curiel. Trump provoked a massive backlash from Republicans when he said that Curiel had an inherent conflict of interest in presiding over the case because of his Mexican heritage. Curiel was born in Indiana.

"It's not a big case and they don't care about it," Trump said about voters. "Nobody cares. We want to get on to where the economy is going and everything else."
posted by zachlipton at 12:37 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]



#GirlIGuessImWithHer for the less enthused but committed HRC supporters.


I started this way but ended up pretty excited about her candidacy - could happen with them too.
posted by zutalors! at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Much as I support corb and her fellow #NeverTrump Republicans, I think there is absolutely no possible way that the Republican Party will cheat Trump out of the nomination.

I also think all the people speculating that Trump will drop out are whistling past the graveyard. It won't happen. He's a power hungry type, no way, no how, nothing doing, will he abandon a chance at the opportunity to get back at his enemies with the power of the Presidency.

The simple, unfortunate, fact is that Trump won fair and square. Any attempt to deprive him of the nomination would genuinely, no fooling, be cheating him out of what he legitimately got. And that should be cause for any sane Republican to reflect on what they and their party has been doing for decades that produced the environment which allowed Trump to win, because he didn't just appear out of nowhere.

The Republican party is in a bad place, because on the one hand, allowing Trump to be the nominee is a humiliating embarrassment and will likely cost them several down ticket seats.

But from the standpoint of survival of the Republican party as a nationally significant party, the alternative is worse. Never mind the riots, murders, and violence that would erupt if Trump were cheated out of his victory, the Party leaders don't care about little people. If Cleveland burns they won't care in the slightest.

What will give them pause is that cheating Trump would mean fracturing the party entirely. A Trump candidate will lose a few of the less bigoted Republicans, maybe forever but more likely for a few election cycles. That's not good in their electoral calculus but it's something the Party can recover from. They'll lose a few downticket seats but that too is something the Party can recover from. For that matter, losing a few seats now for bigger gains later is one of the big Republican strengths.

Cheating Trump will mean they lose his entire voting base for a long time, some of them possibly forever, some of them for many election cycles. It might even be enough to start one of America's periodic party realignments and spell the actual end of the Republican party. Even if all that happens is that they lose the racist white male vote for the next few generations, that's enough to kill them as a nationally significant party.

They cheat Trump and the Democrats will not only win the Presidency in 2016 they might even take back the House. They cheat Trump and the Democrats will own the Presidency for at least twenty years, maybe longer. They cheat Trump and the Democrats will dominate American politics until a new opposition party can form from the ashes of the Republican party.

And for Republicans with a shred of decency and morals that would be a painful price to pay, but one that they might be willing to in an effort to make amends for the decades of bigotry that brought them so low that Trump could legitimately win. An atonement of sorts, not actually enough to repay all the blood spilled so they they could be nationally influential, but a start.

But the Party elites have no morals, have no decency, and they will not sanction the grave harm that would come to the party by cheating Trump. So it won't happen.

I'm betting corb and her fellows will be completely shut out, that the Cleveland Convention is the usual coronation and no one will even be permitted to speak against him, much less twist the rules to steal the nomination from him. The last thing they want is a big fuss.
posted by sotonohito at 12:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


Republicans trying to intimidate the rank in file... not even remotely surprised.

The idea that Republicans fall in line without coercion has always been a false narrative
posted by vuron at 12:41 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Much as I support corb and her fellow #NeverTrump Republicans, I think there is absolutely no possible way that the Republican Party will cheat Trump out of the nomination.

I agree with this. He'll be the nominee, and he should be. This is what they voted for.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


> "If you bet "less than 24 hours,' ding ding ding you're a winner ..."

I honestly think that if a genie offered Trump three wishes if he would spend the next fifteen seconds not talking, he would spend them explaining how great he was at not talking.
posted by kyrademon at 12:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [40 favorites]




Yes you can bet/vote on whatever horse you want, the problem is that are only going to be two in the race that will actually finish and everyone knows which two those are.
posted by VTX at 12:43 PM on June 8, 2016


Trump also spoke at length about his controversial real-estate program, Trump University, despite a lengthy statement a day earlier in which he said he did "not intend to comment on this matter any further."

It would be all kinds of banana pancakes awesome if the press kept using this "Today Trump said x, despite having said not-x the day before" formulation from now until November. (As I mentioned upthread, an NPR reporter did note the, ah, inconsistency of Trump using a Teleprompter after having decried them.)

Clinton's campaign, certainly, should mine the rich veins of Trump opposition research to prepare the kind of "let's go to the videotape" evidence videos they had ready for when Trump denied saying the crazy things she cited in her foreign policy speech.

It's still early in the campaign season, but defining Trump as someone whose positions are all over the map will undercut the illusion some of his supporters have that he's a "straight talker."
posted by Gelatin at 12:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


So, ideally, we would have black defendants tried solely by black judges, gay defendants by gay judges, Muslim defendants by Muslim judges, poor defendants by poor judges, spray-tanned defendants by spray-tanned judges, etc. This actually sounds like a fantastic idea. The Trump Rule, we could call it. Go Trump! Go Grassley! Let's do this!

FZ: I think there's some law that says if you go to trial for something you have to be tried by a jury made up from your peer group, right? Well, I think a bare minimum requirement for this peer group is that it has to be people from your own politico-socio-economic group, at least your own age group. In other words, young people with long hair cannot be fairly tried by old people with no hair; that isn't a peer group. If you have long hair, the jury should have long hair. If you take drugs, the jury should have taken drugs. If you are a Bircher, the jury should be Birchers.

RS: Wait a minute. Are you serious? Where do you draw the line? At blue eyes?

FZ: I don't say they have to be your biological duplicate. But there should be some sociological definition of peer group. You should be tried by people who see things the same way you do. Until that happens I'll laugh every time I hear the word "justice."

-- The Frank Zappa Interview, Rolling Stone #14: July 20, 1968
posted by Herodios at 12:50 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


I was under the impression that "straight talker" was code in this context for "says the racist stuff we're thinking."
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Yes, we probably will not win. I'm going to try and fight my hardest, but yeah, it's an uphill battle. And yeah, maybe we're using D&D style tricks to try to take down a presidential would-be nominee. That's real. But having Trump as the nominee - having Trump's ideas on the national stage - has real and horrible consequences in the normalization of open, ugly, violent, racism. It has horrible consequences on children who are growing up thinking this is acceptable speech and action. And not just feeling-consequences. People are being hurt and even dying because of KKK-style actions that would have been inconceivable a decade ago. This is dangerous and horrible and must be stopped - by any means necessary.

Fighting Trump may blow up the Republican Party, and I don't give a damn. If this is what the Party is, it deserves to blow up. Honorable people can disagree vehemently on many, many subjects, but "is this citizen less a citizen because of their color or creed" is not one of them. Nor is "Should this protester be violently beaten at my rally." Not in America. You can't say you love America and then say "but only for white people, and I'll enforce that with fists."

So yeah. Either we fix the party or it burns, and I really hope somewhere is going to take in our refugees, because we have a lot of heart. But I'm not going to hold back from fighting Trump on that basis.
posted by corb at 12:53 PM on June 8, 2016 [90 favorites]


From the Bloomberg News piece that zachlipton linked to just above, he continues to have his campaign events held at Trump properties. I'm sure he charges his campaign premium last minute prices, always looking to make a buck. :
"I don't even know where yet. I think we are gonna do it in Washington at the club," Trump said about delivering the speech at Trump National Golf Course in suburban Virginia. "Let's do it at the club," he said, turning to Hope Hicks, his top press aide. "I wouldn't mind doing it on the Potomac."
posted by readery at 12:53 PM on June 8, 2016


Cheating Trump will mean they lose his entire voting base for a long time, some of them possibly forever, some of them for many election cycles. It might even be enough to start one of America's periodic party realignments and spell the actual end of the Republican party. Even if all that happens is that they lose the racist white male vote for the next few generations, that's enough to kill them as a nationally significant party.

But at the same time, the Democrats should make absolutely clear that they intend to hang the racism and sexism of their chosen standard bearer around the necks of the entire Republican Party, in a way that makes those decent people who heretofore voted Republican that corb mentioned wash their hands of the party once and for all.

As Lee Atwater infamously observed, at least the Republicans seemed to recognize that overt racism was unacceptable, relying instead on coded language. Trump has blown their cover, saying the quiet parts loud.

Now we do indeed have a long-overdue opportunity for a historic realignment -- for the Republicans, too, to bid goodbye to its racist rump Confederate caucus as they should have done after the Civil Rights Act was passed, rather than welcoming them with open arms. Let the Democrats and Republicans compete for a diverse coalition, and thereby keep each other honest, and let the racist voter be told that they aren't welcome in either party. (And no, the milquetoast tut-tutting from the likes of Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell don't cut it.)
posted by Gelatin at 12:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Unfortunately, because of California's Primary System, 50%+1 was enough to re-elect him without coming back in November

Not true - top two vote getters in the primary will be head to head on the ballot in November.
posted by one_bean at 12:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was under the impression that "straight talker" was code in this context for "says the racist stuff we're thinking."

Certainly "not politically correct" was code for that, at least.
posted by Gelatin at 12:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


And yeah, maybe we're using D&D style tricks to try to take down a presidential would-be nominee.

May we all roll a 20 in our saving throw versus Trump.
posted by Gelatin at 12:56 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]




top two vote getters in the primary will be head to head on the ballot in November.
My mistake... I'd seen primary winners with 50%+1 get to forego the November election, but only in a couple examples that were County or City offices. So it applies to races in my locality, but anything involving State or Federal offices, not so.

I learn something new every day here.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:04 PM on June 8, 2016


The self-funded campaign by a certain BILLIONAIRE is sketchy at best because apparently he hasn't spent a dime on himself-- he has only loaned the money to his campaign. As was pointed out by readery he rents his own properties as well as charges for the use of his planes and helicopters. Now that he has reached the point where he needs to raise funds from outsiders there will probably be some fancy-scmancy paperwork which might get interesting. Can he exact interest on the money he loaned to The TRUMP campaign? And if so, at which rate? Can he rent out his properties at inflated prices? Can he charge himself for his own PR (i.e. midnight tweeting)? The workings of the TRUMP brain may take campaigning to a whole new level of remuneration.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:06 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Can he exact interest on the money he loaned to The TRUMP campaign? And if so, at which rate? Can he rent out his properties at inflated prices? Can he charge himself for his own PR (i.e. midnight tweeting)? The workings of the TRUMP brain may take campaigning to a whole new level of remuneration.

True believer = easy mark, then? Maybe he's a better businessman than I'm giving him credit for.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:08 PM on June 8, 2016


Koch's team to meet Trump's camp, but industrialist remains skeptical

That doesn’t mean Koch, one of the biggest financial players in Republican politics, will endorse the brash billionaire or open his bank accounts to back his presidential bid. In a wide-ranging interview, he criticized Trump’s recent comments about the Mexican heritage of a federal judge overseeing a civil fraud case against his now-shuttered Trump University.
-
Asked whether he thought Trump was fit to be president, Koch said: “I don’t know the answer to that.”


Just give all your money to Gary Johnson instead, Koch. He is actually capable of governing and you call yourself a libertarian anyway. Sure, he isn't going to win, but neither is Trump.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


businessman grifter, rather
posted by Existential Dread at 1:11 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The workings of the TRUMP brain may take campaigning to a whole new level of remuneration.

Presidential campaign as Ponzi scheme.
posted by nubs at 1:11 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Stolen from a Canadian friend: The daughter of the first black President will cast her first vote for a woman.
I read that on Twitter today and really took it in.
America is already great.

posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:12 PM on June 8, 2016 [44 favorites]


I was pleased when it looked like Koch would fund Johnson - they're more closely aligned on marriage equality, a woman's right to choose, criminal justice reform, and free trade than Koch and Trump are. If Koch funds Trump I'll be surprised and disappointed.
posted by stolyarova at 1:12 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


The daughter of the first black President will cast her first vote for a woman.

And here come the tears again.
posted by cooker girl at 1:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Now we do indeed have a long-overdue opportunity for a historic realignment . . . Let the Democrats and Republicans compete for a diverse coalition, and thereby keep each other honest . . .

Once the Republican Party is done eating its own young, I'm totally down with the current Democratic Party as it is -- with only a few small nudges to the left here and there -- becoming the new party of the electable center-right, while something new arises to become the party of the electable center-left.
 
posted by Herodios at 1:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Holy shit, corb. Damn! Keep up the good fight!

It's worth noting that the "good fight" involves replacing one xenophobic racist with another xenophobic racist.
posted by JackFlash at 1:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [25 favorites]


I don't know why people think that Sanders is *ever* going to honorably concede or even endorse Clinton. He's already accused her of being a criminal. That's not really something you can just walk back whenever you feel like it.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 1:16 PM on June 8, 2016


Yeah, I think Cruz is worse than Trump. I'm not sure it's a good fight.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Kochs want economic liberties but seem to be remarkably wish-washy on left libertarian causes.

Considering Democrats are definitely open to free trade arguments to the point where Keynesian economic strategies have largely been abandoned in the US by both parties I'm not sure that people like the Kochs should be supporting Republicans who tend to be bad on economics and social issues.
posted by vuron at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump has a 34/59 favorability in Pennsylvania. Voters think the Phillie Phanatic is more qualified than him to be President, 46/40

Unfortunately, I believe the Phanatic was born in the Galápagos Islands. Not a natural born citizen. Otherwise, he would be an improvement over Trump.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


If the Republican establishment is already contemplating the unprecedented step of yanking the nomination away from the frontrunner, then it's not unreasonable to assume that they might just give it to someone other than the universally reviled runner-up, I guess.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:22 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


corb I certainly didn't mean to imply or say that you and your comrades shouldn't try to deny Trump his victory using whatever procedural tricks you can muster.

I just don't think you'll be permitted to do anything by the Party bosses.

Also, on a personal note, I don't really know you but I do worry for your safety and those Trumpshirts are itching for an excuse to rough up or even kill their opponents. Be paranoid. Please.
posted by sotonohito at 1:23 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


PHILLIE PHANATIC 2016: MAKE AMERICA GREEN AGAIN

MR. MET: BAD FOR BASEBALL, BAD FOR AMERICA
posted by tonycpsu at 1:24 PM on June 8, 2016 [11 favorites]


Yeah, I think Cruz is worse than Trump. I'm not sure it's a good fight.

Cruz has already told Ken Cuchinelli (supposedly) that he will not accept a second ballot win under these circumstances, and Cruz staffers are putting out that everyone should be focused on 2020, and not spoiling the convention and making everyone think Cruz is an election-stealer. I'm hearing a lot of "Cruz wouldn't actually win if he took the nomination, so we don't want to do that, because then he can't win later, and we Need Him as President".

There are some Cruz'ers who are trying to put him on anyway, but others who are looking for other options as a consequence. No one has a plurality - but Trump doesn't have enough true delegates to win on subsequent ballots with everyone unbound.

So I'm actually in the kind of interesting position of trying to take Trump off the ticket (for which there is a lot of support) without having a unified person to put back /on/ the ticket. I have literally no idea who it could be at this point.
posted by corb at 1:26 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


Leave Mr. Met alone.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Boomers are getting older . . .

It is going to be beautiful watching the Republican Party flush itself down the shitter. Beautiful. BEAUTIFUL.


I hope so, but it has absolutely nothing to do with 'boomers'.
 
posted by Herodios at 1:28 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


Before anyone gets nostalgic for JEB!:
Jeb Bush told a South Carolina crowd Thursday that Democrats play to African-American voters by offering "free stuff," a similar comment to a contentious one that Mitt Romney made in the days after his 2012 loss to President Barack Obama.

Bush, analyzing Republicans' chances with black voters, said that his party needs to make a better case to the traditionally Democratic voting bloc.

"Our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn't one of division and 'Get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff,'" Bush said Thursday at an event in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

It was similar to a Romney comment three years ago, in the days after his 2012 loss, where the former Massachusetts governor blamed the outcome, on a call with donors, on Obama's "gifts" for minority voters.
Also, let's be clear that every single one of this year's GOP candidates agree with him (and Trump) that this is the case. Cruz or Rubio or Fiorina or whoever else would step into a hypothetical void is just as straight-up racist as this shitnozzle. In a way, we have Trump to thank for making sure that conservatives are now letting us know exactly what they mean instead of hinting about it.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:28 PM on June 8, 2016 [20 favorites]


I don't know why people think that Sanders is ever going to honorably concede or even endorse Clinton. He's already accused her of being a criminal. That's not really something you can just walk back whenever you feel like it.

You would be amazed what you can go back on in politics. But also: cite?
posted by Going To Maine at 1:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


"Cheating Trump will mean they lose his entire voting base for a long time, some of them possibly forever, some of them for many election cycles. It might even be enough to start one of America's periodic party realignments and spell the actual end of the Republican party. Even if all that happens is that they lose the racist white male vote for the next few generations, that's enough to kill them as a nationally significant party. "

Yes, and the existential threat of Trump as the nominee is losing Latino voters permanently, the way the GOP lost African-Americans permanently. The GOP leadership KNOWS they're not a viable national party if they can't start appealing to Latinos, hence the post-mortem after 2012 that emphasized immigration reform. (Which the leadership pushed and the rank-and-file revolted against because of the need to keep the racist white dudes vote on their side.) And that's why the Judge Curiel stuff is a bridge too far for some of the party leadership -- Trump and his endless racist shit about Mexicans is an existential threat to the GOP that turns it into the permanent rump party of white rage right as the US looks at becoming a majority-minority country.

Some kind of realignment is coming. The party leadership has to decide whether they're going to risk shedding the racist parts of the base, or give up on ever capturing minorities at all -- and sticking with the racists is losing them more and more corporate support as Fortune 500 companies think it's bad for business and bad for recruitment to support anti-minority and anti-LGBT policies.

It's also important to keep in mind that the GOP coalition as it's existed since Reagan owes a lot to specific "Greatest Generation" and Baby Boomer demographics, and those demographic groups are fading out. The Democrats have been realigning their party and bringing in younger voters and emerging demographic groups and addressing their concerns (not always smoothly, but they're doing it). The GOP has continued to chase its GG/Boomer coalition and has ignored the needs and concerns of young people -- LGBT rights, student loans, child care costs, even public schools (Boomers aren't using them anymore! They don't need funding!). It's really telling that their rhetorical and ideological positions are STILL tied to Reagan and that's STILL what they're trying to sell. They've done a great job building up College Republicans and creating a leadership pipeline, but to a certain extent that hides the extent to which young people aren't engaged with the GOP and the GOP only engages with young people it co-opts into its existing structure -- it's not organically addressing the needs of young people as lived in their actual lives.

Anyway the GOP is on the horns of a pretty dire dilemma of which either prong is an existential threat. Acquiesce to Trump and lose the Latino vote for the foreseeable future (not to mention college-educated suburban white women who are already defecting in the polls). Or fight Trump and lose the base. Really at this point they're best off if he gets indicted for something.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [36 favorites]


Having caught up with almost all this thread, and having had several longer comments blammed earlier on... I just want to say i really really wish that as a whole, we could be better than "most people criticizing Clinton are lowkey misogynists". And i've literally seen more of that here than anywhere else.

I mean, i'll just give up if this one gets deleted too. I'm not trying to start a fight, or even a discussion. I just think it's a cheap ass shot and wish that people could stop for a second before they reach for the easy mallet and high fives.

There's plenty of flat out misogynistic shit being thrown around, but it always seems to turn in to just throwing everything negative in the same bucket with it. The jacket thing is bullshit, and i called that out on social media. But there's plenty of regular election tabloid dirt and voting history stuff being brought up that just gets that in response and it bums me out.

I almost made a meta out of this, but i feel really bad for the mods right now and i don't think it would go anywhere productive anyways. But holy crap this thread hits that note like every 4 hours. Shit, i'm going to vote for her and i won't even be mad. Bummed, sure, but not like "rooked" like some people seem to feel. This whole election has brought out the absolute worst in people rhetoric wise though, and it just makes me sad.

Plenty has already been said about the people slinging shit at her too, so i feel like i don't need to go there. But just... Bummer.
posted by emptythought at 1:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


emptythought, a lot of the people opposing her aren't low-key at all. Did you see the dogwhistler on my FB feed earlier insisting that women are happier if they don't try to do 'men's jobs'?
posted by stolyarova at 1:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Metafilter: I almost made a meta out of this, but i feel really bad for the mods right now
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


I'm on record as supporting the San Diego Chicken as a potential California Favorite Son in every election since the '80s, but does anybody listen?
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


without having a unified person to put back /on/ the ticket. I have literally no idea who it could be at this point.

Rand Paul? I'm not a fan of the guy because I'm a Democrat and all, but he comes across as Not Stupid. I still don't understand why he did so poorly in the primaries, honestly. But dropping out as early as he did, maybe he's still relatively untarnished? Like he was legitimately a candidate this year (so not being pulled out of thin air) but people also can't say "But look at all the primaries he lost to Trump" because he dropped out after Iowa.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:35 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


heh at Trump wanting to attend Muhammad Ali's funeral
posted by angrycat at 1:35 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I also think all the people speculating that Trump will drop out are whistling past the graveyard. It won't happen. He's a power hungry type, no way, no how, nothing doing, will he abandon a chance at the opportunity to get back at his enemies with the power of the Presidency.

What if it becomes clear, even to his narcissism-clouded eyes, that he is about to become a capital-L Loser for the ages? Losing big on the national stage is bad for his brand, which would be bad for his post-election money-making prospects. This is a man who sells himself in part on knowing when to strategically quit (see: all the bankruptcies). He's going to continue to not invest in his campaign in order to generate maximum publicity for himself at minimal cost, then hang his failures on unfair treatment from some other group - the media, the GOP establishment, whatever.

I don't think he'll formally drop-out, but I don't think it impossible that he ghosts on his nomination if it starts to look too bad for business. If he has a way to save face via claims of being cheated or scapegoating some group for being unfair, all the better for him.
posted by palindromic at 1:35 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, let's be clear that every single one of this year's GOP candidates agree with him (and Trump) that this is the case. Cruz or Rubio or Fiorina or whoever else would step into a hypothetical void is just as straight-up racist as this shitnozzle.

We can be clear that, no matter what their policies might be, Republicans will be Republican, and they will be much less good on race questions. But Trump is actually, fundamentally different. In a country where only a slim majority of Americans considered Trump’s comments on the judge racist, a dog-whistle and actively labeling Mexicans as rapists cannot be considered a pointless distinction.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


So I guess that segues into convention analysis, which someone asked about upthread. Possibilities:

1) The rules are changed to unbind the delegates - we will know whether this is successful approximately by mid-week before the convention. If that's the case, you're looking for a candidate that can coalesce a lot of the different groups. It's unlikely to be Cruz, probably not Kasich either because of the beating in the polls. It could go back to being Paul Ryan or someone else, but it's totally Calvinball at that point.

2) The rules are not changed to unbind the delegates, but changed in some way to remove Trump from the first ballot win. In that case, you'll probably have one of the people who has been running who has existing people to start ramping up.

3) The rules are changed via abstention until after the first vote - in that case, see #2

In all cases, I would say expect some ugliness. #1 and #2 can come about with <100 people, but people chosen for Rules are often party loyalists, so there's pushback. #3 needs about 500.
posted by corb at 1:37 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


During a fiery speech to supporters late Tuesday night in California, Bernie Sanders rattled off several reasons why he’s staying in the race against Hillary Clinton. But there was strikingly little said about what typically would be the most compelling one: winning the Democratic nomination.....

For some time now, though, Sanders’s rationale for staying in the race has been evolving.

More than a month ago, he summoned reporters to Washington and said that he expected to go on a run in the final stretch of the primary season and had a reasonable shot at catching Clinton in the pledged delegate count.

That was among the reasons Sanders said superdelegates should consider backing him — because he would be the candidate with momentum. That argument vanished after Tuesday’s defeats in California and New Jersey, another delegate-rich state, and a decisive loss in Puerto Rico over the weekend.

Sanders has also argued — and continues to make the case — that he would be a stronger candidate than Clinton in the fall election against Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump. That is based on a series of polls that generally have shown him winning by more than Clinton.

Clinton partisans counter that Sanders has never been on the receiving end of a national negative ad campaign, and that those numbers would probably change as soon as that happened.

Sanders also touts his strength with independent voters as an asset for the fall, as well as his far greater appeal than Clinton among young voters. He tends not to mention that Clinton has done comparably well with older voters...

Several weeks ago, as Sanders was asked about his staying power in the race, he said that it would be “undemocratic” to bow out before every voter in the Democratic primaries and caucuses had a chance to express their preference.
Sanders’s rationale for staying in the race may no longer include winning
posted by y2karl at 1:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


PHILLIE PHANATIC 2016: MAKE AMERICA GREEN AGAIN

I'm voting for Steely McBeam.
posted by octothorpe at 1:40 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


You would be amazed what you can go back on in politics. But also: cite?
posted by Going To Maine at 1:29 PM on June 8
[2 favorites +] [!]


You want me to cite his repeated insinuations that Hillary (or the "Establishment", of which she is presumably Overlord) has stolen primaries from him?

Google it.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 1:43 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The GOP has continued to chase its GG/Boomer coalition.

Boomers perhaps but the very few remaining Greatest Generation, less than 1% of the population, are in their nineties.
posted by JackFlash at 1:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


You want me to cite his repeated insinuations that Hillary (or the "Establishment", of which she is presumably Overlord) has stolen primaries from him?

Stealing a primary isn’t a crime, though. That’s hella easy to walk back. Calling Clinton a war criminal - that would be hard.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:47 PM on June 8, 2016


the very few remaining Greatest Generation, less than 1% of the population, are in their nineties

And my grandma (92) voted for Bernie.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:49 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Boomers perhaps but the very few remaining Greatest Generation, less than 1% of the population, are in their nineties."

Well, right, that's why continuing to chase that coalition, and not shifting policy/rhetoric to address the concerns of Millennials and Xers, is dumb.

Except in Chicago, where the dead vote twice!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:50 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Donald Trump and I are on the links and he's my caddy."
Benny, In the Heights
posted by angrycat at 1:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


New Audio of Hillary Clinton's 1969 Student Speech at Wellesley - "Clinton (er, Rodham) sounds more like a Bernie Sanders supporter would sound now."
I find myself in a familiar position, that of reacting, something that our generation has been doing for quite a while now. We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable element of criticizing and constructive protest...

Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.
Read Hillary Clinton's 1971 letter to Saul Alinsky - "He offered me the chance to work with him when I graduated from college, and he was disappointed that I decided instead to go to law school. [He] said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within."*

How an obscure socialist text from the '80s predicted Bernie Sanders's rise - "Sanders undoubtedly knew of and probably read Howe's journal Dissent, the intellectual voice of democratic socialism. In his book, Howe offered a political prescription of how American socialists should work to build a socialist movement in their country. Howe asked a question: What if a left-wing movement resurrected the strategy used by American Communists during the years of the Second World War — that of a popular front in which socialists aligned with liberals in a common fight for programs both favored?"

---
*also btw...
In New Political Warfare, 'Armies Of Video Trackers' Swarm Candidates - "New Yorker writer Jane Mayer discusses conservative activist James O'Keefe's latest botched sting operation, and the new kind of political opposition research O'Keefe pioneered."
And what he told me I thought was very interesting also was that while he was at Rutgers, one of his professors had him study the work of Saul Alinsky, who famously was a leftist activist who wrote a book called "Rules For Radicals." And he learned by reading Alinsky how to take on the left himself.
viz. The rules; cf. Hillary Clinton's 1969 Thesis on Saul Alinsky
posted by kliuless at 2:00 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]




I made a public, celebratory Clinton post on Facebook this morning. I vowed to myself that, for once, I'd feel free to delete any negative comments with careless abandon.

I didn't include that disclaimer in the post itself, because I refuse to cockblock my own jubilation.

So far, so good. I know I have plenty of hardcore Bernie supporters among my friends, including some vocal Bernie-or-Bust types, but none have crapped on my parade. This makes me very happy.
posted by Superplin at 2:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


The GOP has continued to chase its GG/Boomer coalition.

And now they've ended up with the GG Allin coalition, if the average Trump voter is any indication.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:07 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]



We didn’t know where Hillary’s votes were coming from bc they didn’t feel it was safe to tell us in the first place.


ugh, that tweet breaks my heart.
posted by zutalors! at 2:07 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


i for one hope that bernie stays in the race as long as he deems necessary; i just would like him to focus on pulling hillary to the left rather than trying to win the nomination. he's done some real work shifting the overton window and keeping hillary from angling towards the center, and i think it would be wonderful if he could keep doing that while he has this national platform. and no, i don't think it's sexist if he stays in the race for that reason. and yes, there are shitty sexist bernie supporters. but by and large my experience lately has been hillary supporters - mostly well-off white men - telling me (and my other female bernie supporter friends) that it's internalized misogyny that makes me not like hillary, not the fact that i legitimately disagree with her policies. i think that's horribly gross and dismissive.
posted by burgerrr at 2:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


From the link Salieri posted above:

“This is not to generalize all women as Hillary supporters, or as timid — of course not! But I personally believe there’s a correlation between her largely female volunteer base (as of now), her unexpected voter turnout, and the fear so many women have of expressing themselves online, or on the street, or in the boardroom.

A lot of people on social media have wondered where all of Hillary’s votes came from, because there was no signage, no outpouring of love on Facebook. It shouldn’t surprise us that when we fail to listen to women’s voices well in the public sphere, we mis-calculate what women are actually thinking about doing in private. We didn’t know where Hillary’s votes were coming from because they didn’t feel it was safe for them to tell us in the first place.”
posted by pocketfullofrye at 2:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [34 favorites]


After reading that tweet, I'm going to put the Hillary bumper sticker on my car tonight.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 2:10 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


I'm a coward. I live in an area with a lot of Republicans and I just keep my head down and my opinions to myself. So I have no political bumper stickers of any sort.

I've got a kid to feed, I can't afford to lose my job because I'm a Democrat.
posted by sotonohito at 2:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


I also got MeMails and FB notes from people who were scared to post publicly about Clinton. it's a thing. I wonder how much it affects those much touted head to head poll numbers.
posted by zutalors! at 2:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Getting yelled at by dummos never really bothered me much so I'd probably just respond to people on social media mad at me voting for Clinton with a "u mad bro?" meme. But I'm a guy so I don't have to deal with the gendered shit.
posted by Justinian at 2:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm in South Dakota and can't risk losing customers.
posted by yesster at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


There have been Hillary stickers on my bike and car and a big yard sign up in the front yard for months now. Let's all do it!!
posted by bearwife at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm in a red state (that may be turning purple!) and I need to get off my ass and get a yard sign or something. It's time.

I don't currently have any bumper stickers except one: a few weeks ago, I dusted off my "Women Will Remember in November" decal and stuck in on the back of the car. Now I just have to remember not to drive like a complete asshole and spoil the message.

(I can't even remember where that decal came from - I think maybe the last big blowup involving birth control coverage? Or perhaps Romney and his Binders of Women? It's interesting that there are so many slings and arrows that I can't even tell at this point, but at least it stays nicely relevant!)
posted by Salieri at 2:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]




I am an opinionated and loud-mouthed woman, but there's only so much you can do about every dude in the room talking over you about Bernie. I have had this experience at least three times this primary season, where all the dudes just seamlessly never stopped talking, even when I was clearly saying something. I bet they assumed that I was voting for Bernie. I bet every man in my life, except my partner, just went ahead and assumed I was voting Bernie without even needing to ask.

Won't they be surprised.
posted by palindromic at 2:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [29 favorites]


Unfortunately a great deal of my Facebook is full of Clinton-haters, including the private feminist group where celebrating the first female nominee is not allowed (all pro-Clinton posts turn into Clinton-hate) and way too many of the the women are darkly alluding that Clinton and Trump will be no different. These include queer and POC women. It is depressing.

I can't speak for the particular Facebook group in question, but I can put forward an example of part of the reason that some queer and POC women are so angry at Clinton.

This morning my partner woke up to a bunch of messages from people about how she was showing up in footage in this Hillary Clinton ad. Sure enough, at around the 1:40 mark, there’s footage of Peta Lindsay speaking at a Women Organized to Resist and Defend rally.

Hillary Clinton was never involved with that rally, nor was she involved in any way with WORD. Peta Lindsay has been a socialist for the past fifteen years, ever since she was seventeen; she has never been affiliated with the Democratic party in any manner. Hillary Clinton was one of the people that Peta Lindsay spoke out against over the authorization to engage in the illegal, imperialist, racist war in Iraq, and again over her similarly-problematic work as Secretary of State.

But Peta Lindsay is an activist woman of color whose work and image can be appropriated by the Democratic Party to push the narrative that Hillary Clinton equals women's activism.

I'm not suggesting that swooping in to take credit for other people’s activism is unique to Hillary. A few years ago MoveOn took footage of a Trayvon Martin protest march that they had nothing to do with, slapped their logo and a donation link on it, and funneled the resulting donations back to Democratic Party causes without providing any hint of credit to the march's organizers. The Democrats have been appropriating the work of the political left for a long time and it's unlikely to change any time soon, but right now Hillary Clinton is the most visible Democrat in America, and it rankles that her nomination being presented as the culmination of the work of the people that her organization is stealing from.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [36 favorites]


A lot of people on social media have wondered where all of Hillary’s votes came from, because there was no signage, no outpouring of love on Facebook. It shouldn’t surprise us that when we fail to listen to women’s voices well in the public sphere, we mis-calculate what women are actually thinking about doing in private. We didn’t know where Hillary’s votes were coming from because they didn’t feel it was safe for them to tell us in the first place.

I was quiet about liking her for on Twitter for a long time, because BernieBros. On Facebook I had some people I had to block before I felt safe and even there, I tended to post about issues, not plain preference for her specifically.

I worry a little less about getting fired for the H sticker on my car (it amuses/pains me that it's small and rather, well, discreet for a bumper sticker) because my industry needs government to function or we go out of business. President Trump would hurt us economically as well as every other way.

But of course it's possible someone will take offense and I'll be out on my ass. I am angry and fed up enough that I decided to take that risk, but I certainly don't judge anyone who doesn't.
posted by emjaybee at 2:30 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've been finding solace in this thread all night and into today. Twitter is brutal, impersonal; FB is almost an alien land. My FB friends range from straight out raging BernieorBust to - equally disturbing - the many who are eerily quiet about anything remotely political. I have many women FB friends, most I've never met ftf.

I've been posting my support for Hillary for a couple of weeks, lightly at first, then "shouting" last night. It is rare to see a 'like', let alone a comment on any of these posts. Berniebots have learned I will attack back. Today I purged my 'friend' list of all Bernieorbust people, and all "news/recommendations" that blast conspiracy theories about Hillary. No more drama; facts and news are more easily found elsewhere.

Those FB friends who watched me being attacked, and pretended not to see, I can accept. They may simply be wiser than me at 'picking their battles' (flagging and moving on!) Still, I can completely understand why Hillary has such a huge silenced majority. It is not safe to be a woman today.
posted by Surfurrus at 2:33 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Much as I support corb and her fellow #NeverTrump Republicans, I think there is absolutely no possible way that the Republican Party will cheat Trump out of the nomination.

I think the utility of both #NeverTrump and #BernieOrBust are to serve as pressure groups within each respective parties to push the leading candidates towards political directions; in this case, leftwards for both. However, in both cases, at this point they've become dominated about personalities and not policy. They need to be converted into groups that will push specific platform planks to be adopted by whomever is chosen at the national conventions. At this point, it's useless to obsess over whomever will be nominated.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:33 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


swooping in to take credit for other people’s activism . . .
posted by Parasite Unseen

A bit of eponylevity at this juncture would be pruduent, I think.
 
posted by Herodios at 2:34 PM on June 8, 2016


> Now we do indeed have a long-overdue opportunity for a historic realignment -- for the Republicans, too, to bid goodbye to its racist rump Confederate caucus as they should have done after the Civil Rights Act was passed, rather than welcoming them with open arms.

We'll see. What I've read recently on NRO and conservative outlets of that ilk is mostly still quite dedicated to pushing the whole "nuh UH, liberals are the *REAL* racists" line. I mean, if they up and utterly reject these people it will give away the entire game they've been playing for the past few decades. But they shit their bed and now they have to roll around in it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:35 PM on June 8, 2016


The comments underneath that tweet above are (for once) worth reading btw. So many women and a few men talking about how they've been fearful to put up yard signs or bumper stickers, and don't want to post on Facebook or Twitter for fear of being attacked. I personally consider myself pretty outspoken, but I find myself restraining myself, only liking other people's posts rather than making one myself. Part of it is that as a permanent resident, I don't feel entirely entitled to comment publicly on the American election (even though I could become a citizen two years from now), but part of it is just fear of the reaction. I find myself thinking, well if I have a conversation (even if public) with this person on his wall, only our mutual friends or his friends will likely see it. If I post something, who knows what attention it will receive. At work, I have a select cadre of people with whom I know it's safe to discuss this stuff. It's frankly exhausting, and nothing like the euphoria that poured out over my Facebook when Obama clinched the nomination in 2008 (and I was definitely among the celebrants).
posted by peacheater at 2:43 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


Just look at the field of Republican ghouls Trump defeated, they're all as horrible as he is, down to a man (plus Carly). Sorry, but you can't swap out Trump for a conventionally appealing candidate, because that is not a thing that exists in the Republican Party. Every last one is Donald Trump, he won not because of some special quality or magic trick, he won because he's the purest distillation of the Republican id, and proposing the exact same ideas as the rest of the field.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:47 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm glad I support Gary Johnson, nobody ever gives you shit when you support cool guy Gary Johnson.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


We didn’t know where Hillary’s votes were coming from bc they didn’t feel it was safe to tell us in the first place.


In a way this is still happening. My FB feed (which is like 90% liberal and very Sanders-friendly) has been a god damned minefield today of men menningly explain to women why they are feministing wrong because Jill Stein got there first and they like her more.
I had a friend post nothing more than her "I Voted" sticker and her comments on it became a shitstorm of things like "I hope your purse is big enough to pay for Hillary's wars" and other barely-coded gender swats.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 2:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]


Just look at the field of Republican ghouls Trump defeated, they're all as horrible as he is,

I look at this statement and think "pre-2016 Rubio might have been able to be half decent" but then I think about the non-straight white males that would have to see progress on their ability to live the life of every other American stagnate and/or go backwards and then it becomes mightily obvious that yes, this statement is pretty much correct.

Are the people who describe constant harassment if they dared to post public support for Clinton on social media all lying? Or is harassment just the price of doing business, Colby?

I sure as hell haven't posted on my Facebook wall publicly that I've switch to donating to Clinton in prep for the general. There's still a few smarting from the CA loss yesterday.
posted by Talez at 2:52 PM on June 8, 2016


One of the things I love about Clinton is that when she says "hold me accountable," she means is and she listens.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 2:53 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


emptythought, a lot of the people opposing her aren't low-key at all. Did you see the dogwhistler on my FB feed earlier insisting that women are happier if they don't try to do 'men's jobs'?

I think what emptythought meant were comments along of lines of that Bernie is only still in race because of pure misogyny, as if preventing a woman from being President is the main reason he didn't concede.
posted by sideshow at 2:56 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of the things I love about Clinton is that when she says "hold me accountable," she means is and she listens.

Has her campaign made any statements about the Honduran coup yet?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:56 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm glad I support Gary Johnson, nobody ever gives you shit when you support cool guy Gary Johnson.

Did you see the Samantha Bee segment interviewing cool guy Gary Johnson?
posted by Talez at 2:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Hillary Clinton was never involved with that rally, nor was she involved in any way with WORD.

And she wasn't even at Seneca Falls either!


But Peta Lindsay is an activist woman of color whose work and image can be appropriated by the Democratic Party to push the narrative that Hillary Clinton equals women's activism.

I think this is a profoundly uncharitable reading of the ad, which is pretty clearly a celebration of the accomplishments and contributions of women to American public life. The message is obviously not that Hillary Clinton equals women's activism, but that Hillary Clinton is one link in a chain of women's activism that stretches from the past into the future. This is not a single activist movement with a common political goal, but in a very real sense all of these women benefit from those who came before, and contribute to those who will come. I think it's a beautiful ad to remind us of that, even if you don't like Clinton's politics.
posted by biogeo at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [55 favorites]


Eric Foner - African-American Voters Have an Understandable Reason to Support Hillary Clinton:
I think that Sanders supporters too frequently fail to understand the conditions facing African Americans today, especially in Republican-controlled states like South Carolina. If you are a black Carolinian you know that politics is almost entirely polarized along racial lines. You have seen your governor (supposedly a forward-looking Republican) reject the expansion of Medicaid, which would enormously benefit low-income people of all races, but especially blacks. Your legislature has enacted laws designed to discourage voting by non-whites. You know that half a century after “integration” in a state where blacks make up over a quarter of the population, they represent only 10 percent of the students at the University of South Carolina and 7 percent at Clemson, the flagship public universities.
posted by palindromic at 2:59 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's an honest question. She has been criticized for foreign policy decisions before, and there doesn't seem to be a response anywhere yet about Honduras. If anything, that was more important than her vote for the Iraq War, given that she was just going along with the majority of Democrats on that one. She was Secretary of State during the Honduran coup, she had an executive role, it's important that it's acknowledged, even if foreign policy is normally ignored except when it involves the U.S. actually invading/bombing somewhere.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:02 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


My FB feed (which is like 90% liberal and very Sanders-friendly) has been a god damned minefield today of men menningly explain to women why they are feministing wrong because Jill Stein got there first and they like her more.

Same on mine (except it's almost all women doing the explaining). But it's a stupid argument because if we are going to go with "woman of a minor party who was on a US Presidential ballot", we'd go with Lockwood back in 1884.
posted by sideshow at 3:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I've been making donations to Clinton but haven't been sharing a whole lot about her in terms of social media because I no longer think there's any point to doing that. Too much grar not enough hmm. I will continue to donate and will celebrate when she becomes president.

But, yeah, posting to Twitter or Facebook just seems like a waste of time and energy. Minds aren't changed in 140 characters with a tinyurl link.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:06 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


She has been criticized for foreign policy decisions before, and there doesn't seem to be a response anywhere yet about Honduras.

What exactly did people want to see happen in Honduras? Just outright denounce the military and burn that bridge to the ground? Oh boy we could have another Cuba! Or did they want to have the United States forcefully reinstall Zelaya? They suspended military co-operation, they suspended travel to the US, they suspended non-humanitarian aid. They negotiated a solution with Zelaya (which might not have been possible if they immediately burned their bridges) not to mention they had pressure from Republican elements pushing to recognize Micheletti anyway.

Am I missing anything here?
posted by Talez at 3:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Too much grar not enough hmm.

Perfectly expressed!

Minds aren't changed in 140 characters with a tinyurl link.

I wish I knew how minds are changed..
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


A reader's observation at TPM:

There does not seem to be any mention of Donald Trump on the official Republican Party website, gop.com. Hillary is there. Bernie is there. George H.W. Bush is there. Reagan is there. Reagan/Bush. Lincoln is there. No Trump anywhere. Not on the blog, signups. Not anywhere that I could find.

I took a look, and yeah, it's Hillary, Bernie, Black Republicans, GOP Hispanics, even George H. W. Bush socks (Seriously? At the top of the page, Bush senior socks??) but there is no mention whatsoever of the presumptive nominee, or indeed any other GOP candidate for president. It's mind boggling!
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


Tom Cotton makes me embarrassed to be from Arkansas. Like more embarrassed than I was to have Tom "doctor mystified by women's bodies" Coburn and Jim "landed his plane on a closed runway and blamed the FAA for it" representing me when I lived in Oklahoma.

I used to call them vile and even batshitinsane. If only I knew then what I know now, I would have used more moderate rhetoric. I did not think it possible for so many to get so terrible. Trump has given them cover to let their freakishly medieval flag fly and most of them have taken the opportunity. How is it that I can long for Romney, Lindsey Graham, and even Mike Huckabee's pre-Tea Party idiot persona. He really wasn't that terrible during his stint as Arkansas governor. Bad, yes, but not like this. Asa and Tim Hutchinson are also looking pretty good right now even though they are objectively horrible. The whole goddamned party has turned into some bastard mutt born of Jim Bob Duggar and Donald fucking Trump.

Thank $DIETY that Hillary is going to be the nominee. She and Bill have years of experience fending off these kinds of shitheads and even helping the other side keep the crazy to a dull roar rather than the full on asteroid strike of nutballs we're seeing now. Love him as much as I do, Bernie does not know how to deal with these people. I'd have loved for him to be VP or otherwise be in a prominent enough position to keep shaming the media for asking about bullshit when he's trying to talk about the plight of poor city-dwellers, but at this point it seems like that will not be possible. He's gotten too personal in his attacks on Hillary these past few weeks and it has really diminished mg respect for him.

Good thing I actually like Hillary. I only preferred Bernie to her because he is a legit socialist and I thought he'd push the Overton Window left farther and faster than Hillary. And until recently I thought he'd make a decent enough President, even after his principled but ultimately quixotic assault on DWS. (whom I don't particularly care for, mind you) I still think he's good for pushing a more leftist agenda, bit I have serious concerns about his ability to govern at this point, especially after his speech last night. I didn't expect concession, but I definitely expected him to start preparing his supporters for the inevitable. After his inability to even try to contain the Bros and the Busters, that was the last straw. I wonder if they realize how much damage they are doing to their own cause?

I was with them both, but now I'm all in with Hillary.

I just hope Bernie can go back to his Senate seat with both his original fire and a newfound sense of humility and common purpose and get shit done where he seems to be best at it. If he actually makes it a contested convention, I will completely lose my shit and be screaming #BurnTheBern.
posted by wierdo at 3:16 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


U.S. PRESIDENT - VOTE FOR ONE
[ ] Donald J. Trump
[x] Pair of George H. W. Bush Socks

posted by prize bull octorok at 3:17 PM on June 8, 2016 [45 favorites]




Black Republicans, GOP Hispanics

I find it hilarious that the photos for both of those include a token white guy.
posted by biogeo at 3:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Am I missing anything here?

It'd be nice if our leaders would come out and say, "It was a difficult decision, and we had to make hard choices based on the best of intelligence at the time, and we are deeply sorry for whatever human suffering we have caused in the process. The United States stands resolute towards promoting human rights both in Latin America and throughout the world, and moving forward my administration will [...x.y.z...]"

Just some sort of acknowledgment and affirmation to make things better, even a token one, is better than silence, y'know?

When have any of our leaders apologized for overuse of force? Admitted to unintentional wrongdoing? When Obama said "We tortured some folks"?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I wish I knew how minds are changed..

In many cases, as Max Planck said about advances in science, one funeral at a time.
posted by JackFlash at 3:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I still have some ello invites left
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:22 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


It'd be nice if our leaders would come out and say, "It was a difficult decision, and we had to make hard choices based on the best of intelligence at the time, and we are deeply sorry for whatever human suffering we have caused in the process. The United States stands resolute towards promoting human rights both in Latin America and throughout the world, and moving forward my administration will [...x.y.z...]"

Wait wait wait. It wasn't a problem we started to begin with, the country's military was literally stopping a proto-dictator who was attempting to consolidate power and become Honduras's Own Hugo Chavez™, we mediated a solution as best we could to the whole clusterfuck and the your complaint is "well we didn't point out how the end doesn't justify the means when a country tried to stop an attempt at turning it into a dictatorship"?
posted by Talez at 3:25 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think this is a profoundly uncharitable reading of the ad, which is pretty clearly a celebration of the accomplishments and contributions of women to American public life. The message is obviously not that Hillary Clinton equals women's activism, but that Hillary Clinton is one link in a chain of women's activism that stretches from the past into the future. This is not a single activist movement with a common political goal, but in a very real sense all of these women benefit from those who came before, and contribute to those who will come. I think it's a beautiful ad to remind us of that, even if you don't like Clinton's politics.

Many of the women featured in that ad are still alive. Many of the organizations featured in that ad are still active. As best I can determine, (and extrapolate based on the experiences of one woman / organization) they were not asked whether or not they wanted to be a part of the Clinton organization's "celebration".

I can say with absolute certainty that at least one of the women featured didn't want to be part of an advertisement designed to help Clinton secure the presidency. There's a word for that, and it's "appropriation"; a lot of the people who do it likewise describe it as a "celebration".
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:25 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


Or maybe let's first study why these systems are attracting toxic personalities and encouraging otherwise-normal people to become toxic; then decide if a non-toxic network is indeed possible.

The angrier and fightier you are, the more you keep coming back to post because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. The more you keep coming back to post, the more ads they serve you. Strong emotions of any sort, positive or negative, are good for their businesses. They may or may not be motivated to come up with ways to make people angry and fighty, but they certainly don't have any motivation to tamp that down. Probably inevitable as long as social media are run by businesses who profit from ad impressions.
posted by biogeo at 3:28 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm a follower but not participant in ello, which just seems to emphasize 'creative types' so much, I feel unworthy unless I can do something really cool. I do have some ello invitations myself.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:29 PM on June 8, 2016


Clinton literally said exactly this about Benghazi so give me a second to go to Google and see how acceptable her detractors found it.

Fair point in general, but I think the detractors who care about Honduras are a different set of detractors.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


The toss ups, according to the link Drink Die posted, are:

Florida
Ohio
Virginia
North Carolina
Iowa
New Hampshire
posted by chrchr at 3:30 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's worth noting that the "good fight" involves replacing one xenophobic racist with another xenophobic racist.

I don't support Cruz either, but corb has made it quite clear that her motivations are to fight the blatant bigotry of Trump despite Cruz no longer being a viable option. Given her social circle and history with the Republican party, her actions may net a level of personal and professional opprobrium that I in my liberal bubble will never face. And the pressure on her to comply will only be increasing. I respect her bravery and commitment to anti-facism and anti-bigotry, irrespective of how our other political beliefs may differ.

I think this knee jerk attitude to dismiss her anti-Trump efforts because she doesn't meet a certain standard of ideology is self-defeating. It seems emblematic of the Left's obsession with achieving purity via self-immolation rather than seeking common ground with potential allies in the name of overthrowing serious threats. I would prefer to celebrate one conservative who draws their line in the sand despite the pressure than a thousand liberals who spout anti-Trump rhetoric to an echo chamber. What do we gain by attacking and alienating such a person?
posted by Anonymous at 3:30 PM on June 8, 2016


Which strikes me as ridiculously optimistic for Trump to call some of those tossups.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


As best I can determine, (and extrapolate based on the experiences of one woman / organization) they were not asked whether or not they wanted to be a part of the Clinton organization's "celebration".

Has Peta Lindsay publicly objected to this usage? I'm not seeing anything from a quick googling.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll share this anecdote. Puerto Rico. On Saturday I received a Robocall to vote for Bernie Sanders. It was in English. Now, this was either really well researched to know that I spoke English or it was really poorly researched to not know that this is almost insulting in Puerto Rico. I suspect the latter, because even among those that speak English, Spanish is the first choice about 95% of the time.
Hillary won with about 60% of the vote.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Has Peta Lindsay publicly objected to this usage? I'm not seeing anything from a quick googling.

She certainly objected to it when we were having breakfast this morning. Her party objected to it in Liberation News, although I don't know that they got a direct quote from her.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:40 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


1500+ comments. sigh. Maybe later this evening I can peruse this. But most of all, I am remembering a photo from Barack Obama's Inauguration of 2 young Black boys looking up at him, totally in awe. Now little girls can have that feeling of Cool, (s)he's gonna be President, and (s)he looks like me Go, Hillary, Go.
posted by theora55 at 3:41 PM on June 8, 2016 [12 favorites]


TRUMP/SOCKS 2016
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wait wait wait. It wasn't a problem we started to begin with, the country's military was literally stopping a proto-dictator who was attempting to consolidate power and become Honduras's Own Hugo Chavez™, we mediated a solution as best we could to the whole clusterfuck and the your complaint is "well we didn't point out how the end doesn't justify the means when a country tried to stop an attempt at turning it into a dictatorship"?

Is that narrative the mainstream consensus over what happened? If I offered sources from CounterPunch or Democracy Now, would they be ad hominem'ed away as inherently biased? Regardless of the validity of Zelaya's actions, we continued to support the military regime even after they started going after indigenous activists and human rights leaders, such as Berta Cáceres. It's just, when an assassinated activist criticizes someone shortly before her murder, it sort of paints a more disturbing picture.

I mean, we should also be critical of Secretary of State Kerry's actions and handling of relations with the Sisi regime after the Egyptian coup, too. I'm not singling Clinton out, other than she's running for president this year, and he isn't.

At any rate, we can continue this derail if people want to, but my overall point is I don't think Clinton is any more or less accountable than the average politician, so I'm not particularly idealistic about her when she says "hold me accountable." That doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for her!, necessarily. Just, temper your expectations. And really hold her accountable.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think this knee jerk attitude to dismiss her anti-Trump efforts because she doesn't meet a certain standard of ideology is self-defeating. It seems emblematic of the Left's obsession with achieving purity via self-immolation rather than seeking common ground with potential allies in the name of overthrowing serious threats. I would prefer to celebrate one conservative who draws their line in the sand despite the pressure than a thousand liberals who spout anti-Trump rhetoric to an echo chamber. What do we gain by attacking and alienating such a person?

Damn straight. I hate to point a person out but corb has stronger convictions and better sense of empathy and community than 99% of the people in this thread. She's not afraid to dig in and help for the greater good even if it's not "her side" and while we can disagree on the vision of that greater good due to political differences, I have no doubt whatsoever that it never fails to come from a good place in her heart.
posted by Talez at 3:43 PM on June 8, 2016 [37 favorites]


rather than seeking common ground with potential allies in the name of overthrowing serious threats.

I fail to see Ted Cruz as an ally and consider him to be serious threat.
posted by JackFlash at 3:43 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


TRUMP/SOCKS 2016

But Socks was a Clinton!
posted by aspo at 3:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


At any rate, we can continue this derail if people want to, but my overall point is I don't think Clinton is any more or less accountable than the average politician, so I'm not particularly idealistic about her when she says "hold me accountable."

She's more accountable because Republicans will hold investigations when she sneezes if they think it will benefit them politically, but that doesn't necessarily translate into accountability on issues they don't care about.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:46 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


aspo, thanks for bringing cat pictures into a thread that desperately needed it.

awwww
posted by you're a kitty! at 3:50 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I still can't shake the feeling that POTUS has always been Trump's Plan B here, with the real goal being taking Rush Limbaugh's job, post-Apprentice.

Speaking of Republican blowhards, I'm reluctantly appreciative of what Joe Scarborough's up to at the moment.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


There's no way any candidate that comes out of a contested convention that denies Trump the nomination isn't going to be sufficiently damaged by the process as to pose very little threat in the general election.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


you're a kitty!

This thread is full of wonderful users making wonderful eponypropriate comments.
posted by stolyarova at 3:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


There is the Cruella De Vil factor. Several individuals described as Hillary's best friends wear dog fur.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, fuck Gary Johnson and the Cato/Rand party. I'd like to see a Libertarian party worthy of the name.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:53 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


If Trump had gone on vacation this year, Ted Cruz would literally be the one to fear. It's a quirk of history that the Tea Party's power gave way to the primal pan-factional nativism that Trump has stirred up. Cruz is no Rubio or Jeb, much less Kasich.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:53 PM on June 8, 2016


The reality is the toss-up map is undeniably awful for Republicans.

Ohio- Basically requires Kasich to be the VP to be competitive
Florida- Cuban Americans might be right-leaning (mainly the older generation) but younger Cuban Americans like Obama normalizing relations with Cuba (they know that they aren't ever going back as anything other than tourists) and Florida is increasingly getting more and more Mexican Americans.
New Hampshire - Iconoclastic but worth hardly any ECs
Iowa- Probably a true toss-up but I have to think Clinton will have the edge due to ground game
Virginia- Yeah Trump is fucked here
North Carolina- For NC to even be a battleground highlights the problems for the Republicans as southern states turn purple.

So despite Missouri turning reliably red in recent elections the Electoral map is looking increasingly difficult for Team Angry White Guys. And that's before the 2020 census probably gives Democrats a solid 270 which isn't out of the realm of possibilities.
posted by vuron at 3:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Has the person who wrote the Wizard Of Oz parodies of the 2008 contest resurfaced? (The Man Obama, the Ronpaul and his Terrible Market)

I'm desperately ready for more of that.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Parasite Unseen, I can imagine how it would be annoying to feel like you're being linked to a candidate you don't support. But as an activist, Peta Lindsay is a public figure, and people can and will comment on her, negatively or positively. To call this appropriation presumes that the Clinton campaign is monolithically white; that is not the case, even if the candidate is. I imagine the Clinton staffers who made the ad (or approved the work of the marketing agency that made it) felt they were honoring her activism and dedication to public life.

Anyway, if I were her, I would see this as a tremendous opportunity to publicly state that she, a woman from Clinton's ad, doesn't support Clinton, because of her willingness to use military force. Personally, if she's able to somehow use this to gain political leverage to further her anti-war message and make it less likely that Clinton will use the military, I'd be thrilled.
posted by biogeo at 3:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'd like to see a Libertarian party worthy of the name.

Out of curiosity, what would that be, according to you?
posted by stolyarova at 3:56 PM on June 8, 2016


you can't pick CHA as your dump stat and win a general election, sorry Cruz
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


Well yeah, but I mean policy-wise Cruz is Trump level if not even worse.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


To call this appropriation presumes that the Clinton campaign is monolithically white

In this instance, it's also radical/progressive POV and action that's being appropriated...
posted by eyesontheroad at 3:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


I looked for Donald Trump pets and only came up with this.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:59 PM on June 8, 2016


There's no way any candidate that comes out of a contested convention that denies Trump the nomination isn't going to be sufficiently damaged by the process as to pose very little threat in the general election

I think denying him is more about the future of the party than the present. I'm pretty sure the Republican power brokers do have some realist advisers who can tell them what is really going on right now even if they will never admit it publicly. Dump Trump or stick with him are both seriously grim paths. But, maybe in 2020 you have a shot with a, "Sure we screwed up our nomination in 2016, our bad, but you don't REALLY want Hillary Clinton, do you?" candidate.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


you can't pick CHA as your dump stat and win a general election, sorry Cruz

But, but, but he has +2 to backstab, +4 vs. allies!
posted by happyroach at 4:04 PM on June 8, 2016 [18 favorites]


Out of curiosity, what would that be, according to you?

One focused on civil liberties for all citizens and useful government, with a non-isolationist foreign policy, rather than one that is in thrall to naked Shadowrun style corporate rule, the NRA and /r9k/ wizchan zombie-survivalist Rand-worshipping Galt's Gulch shitheads.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:05 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


But Johnson/Weld is much closer to that than the Libertarians have literally ever had before.
posted by stolyarova at 4:07 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


This isn't horseshoes. That's still who runs that party. Thiel-types at best.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:07 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


But Johnson/Weld is much closer to that than the Libertarians have literally ever had before.

Yeah that's my confusion here too, we are 100% in agreement with the ideal.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:08 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Speaking of the potential of a GOP crack-up, here's an article from Politico, "How an Outsider President Killed a Party":
It was summer, and a major U.S. political party had just chosen an inexperienced, unqualified, loutish, wealthy outsider with ambiguous party loyalties to be its presidential nominee. Some party luminaries thought he would help them win the general election. But many of the faithful were furious and mystified: How could their party compromise its ideals to such a degree?

Sound like 2016? This happened a century and a half ago.

Many have called Donald Trump’s unexpected takeover of a major political party unprecedented; but it’s not. A similar scenario unfolded in 1848, when General Zachary Taylor, a roughhewn career soldier who had never even voted in a presidential election, conquered the Whig Party.

A look back at what happened that year is eye-opening—and offers warnings for those on both sides of the aisle. Democrats quick to dismiss Trump should beware: Taylor parlayed his outsider appeal to defeat Lewis Cass, an experienced former Cabinet secretary and senator. But Republicans should beware, too: Taylor is often ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history—and, more seriously, the Whig Party never recovered from his victory. In fact, just a few years after Taylor was elected under the Whig banner, the party dissolved—undermined by the divisions that caused Taylor’s nomination in the first place, and also by the loss of faith that followed it.
posted by mhum at 4:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


This isn't horseshoes. That's still who runs that party. Thiel-types at best.

Cool, I guess every single political party, major or minor, has the same issues of establishment vs. idealism. We are all True Scotsmen.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:11 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Thiel has endorsed Trump, not the Libertarian ticket. Bill Weld supported an assault weapons ban (for which he got a lot of shit from some other libertarians). Both he and Johnson have been pushing hard on civil rights for decades. The NRA has also endorsed Trump.
posted by stolyarova at 4:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


No. Last I checked, Johnson wants to abolish half the Cabinet. He's better than some past candidates but he's nowhere near palatable as an alternative for liberals and progressives disenchanted with the DNC.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ah, well then your issue with the Libertarian Party is that it isn't "left-libertarian" enough. I think the party is big enough to accommodate varying forms of the ideology. So then the next step is to get Mike Gravel types involved in the LP to move them out of the hands of the objectivists and anarcho-capitalists and states-rights types. otoh, I'm not sure how big left libertarianism is in the U.S.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:17 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]




Could we elect Trump but impeach him between November and January while still bestowing upon the Republican party a merciful cause of death? Who replaces an impeached president?

The remnants of the grand old party could be split something like 70/30 into a Fine New Party (centrist, pro-war, fiscally selfish, socially nosy) and the xenophobes (anti-"them.")
posted by an animate objects at 4:18 PM on June 8, 2016


He's better than some past candidates but he's nowhere near palatable as an alternative for liberals and progressives disenchanted with the DNC.

I agree with that. People who should vote for him are people who are on board with his views on politics, and they are not to the left of Hillary Clinton.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've swum with the Objectivists (the Atlas Society and similar) and I guarantee that Gary Johnson is definitely nowhere close to being an Objectivist.

Of course, these days Objectivists are incredibly doctrinaire. Rand is a religious figure to the Leonard Peikoff types.
posted by stolyarova at 4:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


One focused on civil liberties for all citizens and useful government, with a non-isolationist foreign policy

Come to think of it, wouldn't the Greens or another leftist third party be a more suitable place for someone with these views?
posted by Apocryphon at 4:28 PM on June 8, 2016


Once the Republican Party is done eating its own young, I'm totally down with the current Democratic Party as it is -- with only a few small nudges to the left here and there -- becoming the new party of the electable center-right, while something new arises to become the party of the electable center-left.

Left v. right is getting ... less interesting. Nationalism v. Globalism, for example, is getting more interesting. Gov't rulers will of course all tend towards nationalism as a core part of the pretence of legitimacy but you can see that Bernie and TRUMP occupy a more nationalist corner compared to Hillary or Jeb.

I think a failure to recognize others are judging on entirely different dimensions is why I see so many mind-boggled that anyone could prefer first Bernie, then TRUMP.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


In this instance, it's also radical/progressive POV and action that's being appropriated...

And so the concept of appropriation was appropriated, and Ouroboros consumed its tail.
posted by biogeo at 4:31 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


And so the concept of appropriation was appropriated, and Ouroboros consumed its tail.

Maybe that's just a joke, but... appropriation is not limited to culture. Land, art forms, culture, political stances, all sorts of things have been appropriated by power (towards its ends) always, and this point of view isn't new, nor is it itself appropriative.

Sorry if that was just a joke. Long day.
posted by eyesontheroad at 4:41 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Isn't Clinton tacking left in response to criticism exactly the sort of thing we WANT politicians to do? What's the good of agitating for change if we then refuse to accept it when people actually listen?
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


From this article:
His running mate won’t be former Texas Governor Rick Perry, but Trump would like to see him in his administration. “I like him," Trump said about Perry. "I’d like to get him involved in some capacity at a high level. Because I think he’s very good. I think he’s very very good. He’s also very good on the border,” Trump said.
What now?
.@GovernorPerry failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2015
posted by peeedro at 4:49 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


...he wants Rick Perry to be a scarecrow mounted at a high level on the border wall.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


That should be Jeb!'s job. After all, he was the candidate this cycle most inclined to cause people to turn around and run away from him.
posted by zachlipton at 4:53 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


That should be Jeb!'s job.

Can I just say that I am tickled pink by the idea that Jeb!'s sole lasting contribution to this race - besides the truly ridiculous amount of money thrown his way - is that exclamation point of sadness.

Centuries from now, after the octopus have arisen and taken over the world, the few remaining humans will uncover bits of media about Jeb! and gaze at his name in awe.

"He must have been a god," some of them will say, and others will argue that, no, that's just a glottal stop. And then the octopus overlords will order them to quit arguing and get back to work.
posted by Salieri at 4:59 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


Hillary Clinton: I Intend On 'Reaching Out' To Sanders' Supporters
... Clinton said on CNN that she "totally" understands how Sanders' supporters feel and she congratulated the Vermont senator on his "really extraordinary campaign" in her call to him [last night]. She said she looked forward to working with Sanders to defeat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. "Senator Sanders has said he will work every day, every week to see that happen, so we're going to be working to make sure that we have a unified party going into our convention and coming out," Clinton said.

Clinton continued and said she would "reach out" to his supporters, adding that she and Sanders had similar goals for health care and minimum wages. "I really believe a lot of Senator Sanders' supporters will join us in making sure Donald Trump doesn't get anywhere near the White House," Clinton declared.
posted by maudlin at 5:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


they're not a viable national party if they can't start appealing to Latinos

California's Geographic Sanders-Clinton Divide Suggests Ethnic, Rural-Urban Split - "The rural counties trend isn't entirely separate from the white voter trend."

Hillary Clinton won big in California's heaviest Latino districts - "Both campaigns told Fusion that Sanders probably won young Latino voters under the age of 50."

There's a generational divide in California's Latino voting bloc - "When respondents under age 50 are separated out, those younger Latinos choose Sanders over Clinton by 58% to 31%. Older Latino respondents, above age 50, still heavily support Clinton, 69% to 16%. The Times/USC survey found that Sanders also has an edge in favorability ratings: 69% of eligible Democratic primary Latino voters surveyed said they have a favorable opinion and 16% an unfavorable opinion of the Vermont senator. The former secretary of State's numbers are 67% and 33%, respectively."

Clinton is somewhat to Obama's right on a number of issues, particularly foreign policy (where the president can actually make a difference in our gridlocked system).

Her foreign policy is too hawkish and I do dread the possibility that she will listen to the deadening rhetoric of centrist "inclusion." The Wall Street money is a problem, and she still has too much of a sweet-tooth for New Democrat solutions that are simply old Republican ideas in sheep's clothing.

How Hillary Changed After Bernie.

areas where sanders (and warren) can pull clinton further left...

Emails Show TPP 'Collusion' Between Mega-Banks & Obama Administration - "Goldman Sachs managing director lobbies for financial industry ISDS 'commitments', ie right to sue govts over finreg"

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both stuck in the past when talking about our future - "For Secretary Clinton, it is the 1990s. For Donald Trump, it is the 1950s. For Clinton, the Good Old Days were the time of her husband's presidency. Indeed, she has said that she would put former President Bill Clinton 'in charge of revitalizing the economy'. And why not? ... Yes, our current situation was caused partly by bad policies and poorly designed trade deals, but it's also the result of tectonic shifts to a service and technology-based economy, which helped Bill Clinton's presidency but hurt his successors. Finding policies that deal with that while preserving global commerce and a free-market economy is really, really hard. That's why the two presidential candidates, who have almost no ideas about the future, are instead wallowing in the past."

In a speech yesterday, Obama offered an important window into his biggest disagreement with Clinton
In most respects, we can expect a Hillary Clinton presidency to feature overwhelming policy and personnel continuity with Obama. If there is a major exception to that trend, this specific question is likely to be where you find it.

On the campaign trail, Clinton proposed a no-fly zone for Syria — precisely the kind of limited but potentially growing military involvement that Obama sought to avoid.

But beyond that, Clinton has strongly hinted that she simply doesn't share Obama's dour view of the Middle East and America's allies there. She's promised to "reaffirm" an "unshakable bond" with Benjamin Netanyahu. As secretary of state she enthusiastically brokered arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates has donated generously to the Clinton Foundation. And Gulf officials who speak with terror about a possible Trump administration are optimistic that they'll get a more sympathetic ear from Clinton.
Jeffrey Sachs: "Her record as Secretary of State was one of the worst in modern U.S. history... " (a little overwrought maybe -- powell/rice? -- but point taken)

Hillary Clinton's Thoughts on NSA Surveillance - "Clinton has not been a passive actor in surveillance policy. 'What the rules are' is something that she was responsible for helping to decide. She served in the United States Senate from 2001 to 2009. She cast votes that enabled the very NSA spying that many now regard as a betrayal. And she knew all about what the NSA wasn't telling the public. To say now that the NSA should've been more transparent raises this question: Why wasn't Clinton among the Democrats working for more transparency?" [1,2,3]

also btw...
CIA inspector general's office destroyed its sole copy of torture report–'mistakenly,' it claims - "The Obama administration has argued that the report is not subject to the FOIA, and now a three-judge appeals court panel in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union has agreed. It seems inevitable that an appeal will be filed with the Supreme Court. While Burr has been eager to get all copies of the torture report returned to SSCI control and locked away until everyone forgets it even exists, Feinstein and fellow committee member Sen. Pat Leahy are trying to get the chief of the National Archives to declare the torture report a 'federal record' that must be preserved under the Federal Records Act. Whether that would make it subject to FOIA requests would no doubt only be resolved in the courts. Whatever happens in this regard, expect it to be a long, long time before the public gets to see the full report—if ever."
posted by kliuless at 5:11 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


I fail to see Ted Cruz as an ally and consider him to be serious threat.

I am talking about your attacks on corb. Cruz is out of the race. corb has stated repeatedly his supporters have been told to stand down and fall behind Trump. She is not doing so. I do not know what you hope to gain by attacking someone who shares your (presumably) anti-Trump goals because she supported a now-defunct candidate. There is no large-scale social movement that was won by shitting on every supporter who did not fit into a predefined ideological box. The sort of person who cannot abide to associate with anyone of a different opinion than them will end up very lonely and likely unsuccessful in achieving their goals in the context of a democratic political system.
posted by Anonymous at 5:13 PM on June 8, 2016


she would put former President Bill Clinton 'in charge of revitalizing the economy'.

I think a lot more has been made out of this statement than she meant. In the context of the speech in which she said it, it was clearly a one-off gaffe meant to capitalize on the positive feelings about the 90s economy. Notice how she has not said anything of the sort since. She has clearly been trying to walk the line between (smartly) utilizing his popularity and campaigning skill while communicating her own vision, and has not always managed to do it well.
posted by Anonymous at 5:25 PM on June 8, 2016


Clinton addressed the Honduras question at length in her Daily News interview:
Well, let me again try to put this in context. The legislature, the national legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya. Now I didn't like the way it looked or the way they did it but they had a very strong argument that they had followed the constitution and the legal precedence. And as you know, they really undercut their argument by spiriting him out of the country in his pajamas, where they sent the military to take him out of his bed and get him out of the country. So this began as a very mixed and difficult situation.

If the United States government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid including humanitarian aid, the Agency for International Development aid, the support that we were providing at that time for a lot of very poor people, and that triggers a legal necessity. There's no way to get around it. So our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and we immediately have to stop all aid for the people, but we should slow walk and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of without calling it a coup.

So you're right. I worked very hard with leaders in the region and got Oscar Arias, the Nobel Prize winner, to take the lead on trying to broker a resolution. Without bloodshed. And that was very important to us that… Zelaya had friends and allies not just in Honduras but in some of the neighboring countries like Nicaragua, and that we could have had a terrible civil war that would have been just terrifying in its loss of life.

So I think we came out with a solution that did hold new elections, but it did not in any way address the structural, systemic problems in that society. And I share your concern that it's not just government actions. Drug gangs, traffickers of all kinds are preying on the people of Honduras.

So I think we need to do more of a Colombian plan for Central America, because remember what was going in Colombia when first my husband and then followed by President Bush had Plan Colombia, which was to try to use our leverage to rein in the government in their actions against the FARC and the guerillas, but also to help the government stop the advance of the FARC and guerillas.

And now we're in the middle of peace talks. It didn't happen overnight. It took a number of years, but I want to see a much more comprehensive approach towards Central America because it's just Honduras. The highest murder rate is in El Salvador and we've got Guatemala with all the problems you know so well.

So I think in retrospect we managed a very difficult situation without bloodshed, without a civil war that led to a new election, and I think that was better for the Honduran people, but we have a lot of work to do to try to help stabilize that and deal with corruption, deal with violence and the gangs and so much else.
And that's pretty much Clinton to a T. The USAID part of her answer, in retrospect, is what convinced me to vote for her. The U.S. had to make a series of decisions about how to act, knowing that none of them would be good. And Clinton has the bureaucratic understanding to recognize the implications of officially declaring something a coup. That is what's meant when people talk about her experience and competence. The executive is mostly faced with making these kinds of difficult decisions. I think Obama talked about this at one point. The president only steps in on the hardest stuff. The rest of it is delegated to the enormous federal apparatus, so your daily decisions about labor disputes or endangered species or clean air or international trade are left to the cabinets and their employees. Only the stuff that doesn't have a clear answer reaches the president's desk. In this answer, Clinton demonstrates that she understood the consequences of her potential actions and weighed them as best she could. Just like with Obama, I doubt I'll always agree with her final decisions. But to me, in this campaign, she's demonstrated the greatest competence in recognizing the nuance in the difficult decisions she's had to make.
posted by one_bean at 5:28 PM on June 8, 2016 [125 favorites]


That is indeed a comprehensive answer. Thank you.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:32 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


So I think we need to do more of a Colombian plan for Central America...

on plan colombia as a 'model':* "Colombia has received billions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug aid under Plan Colombia, and violence has fallen significantly in the past several years. 'Do you know how much the amount of drugs leaving Colombia has gone down?' García Luna asked me. 'Check', he said with a smile. And indeed, by all evidence, there has been no significant decrease in drug flows out of Colombia or in the availability of cocaine or heroin in the United States — and yet, Colombia is considered a success story."

posted by kliuless at 5:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


and violence has fallen significantly in the past several years

This bit is enough for me to consider it a "success" - but then violence is, for me, the primary problem with the drug trade, and our reaction to it. I frankly have no problem with people doing drugs if they're not killing or being killed (by druglords or by SWAT teams) over it.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:47 PM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


It's stuff like this (from Slate) that scares the shit out of me:
Rachel Brookhart, a 25-year-old server whom I’d met earlier in the day while she was volunteering at a Sanders headquarters in East Los Angeles, said she believed the election had been stolen. “It seems that there’s been a lot of voter disenfranchisement and maybe some unsavory numbers,” she told me. Brookhart cited the 125,000 voters who were purged in New York.
...
Again, this makes for a poor contrast between Clinton and Trump: “I think he as a person is absolutely vile. I think as a politician she is absolutely the worst.” She continued, “I think he would do less harm than he is projected to if he were the president. I don’t support him at all and I think it would be absolutely disgraceful if he were to get into office, but I think he’s full of shit. … I don’t think he would do half the corruption that Hillary would do.”
...
Bernie is “my vote and they’re not taking [it] from me in November,” she said. Hoyt then dropped into a whisper: “I will not vote for that bitch. She isn’t getting my vote for nothing.”
According to the article, polling is showing that 20%(!) of Bernie's supporters claim they will vote for Trump over Clinton. Combined with those who will inevitably vote Stein or Johnson, that could well be enough to throw the election to tiny hands Donnie. Bernie has got to do something to talk his people down off the ledge, lest they take the rest of us with them in their suicidal mania.
posted by wierdo at 5:49 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


Violence is down but drugs are still available? Sounds like a win-win to me.... but then I'm for legalization of almost everything.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


It’s stuff like this (from Slate) that scares the shit out of me:

That, of course, is the intent.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Bernie primary voters are a small fraction of the electorate, and 20% of them are an even tinier fraction. We should be focused on turnout and disenfranchisement, not what Sanders-into-Trumpers are doing.
posted by zutalors! at 5:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


I will say this as someone in my mid50s and a Hillary supporter, the talk about emails is totally excusable because I think it must be something like my problems with installing programs. While listening to young Sanders supporters, it's face palm and why can't you see your server needed an SSI enabled rerouter with 53-bit encryption?
Speaking of tech-challenged, my mother, a lifelong Democrat and former member of League of Women's Voters, missed this by a year and a half. Sigh. She did vote for Hillary in 08, though.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:08 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I will not vote for that bitch.

This is why people think that Sanders supporters are by and large motivated by sexism. Because they use misogynist slurs in interviews.

(Not saying that Sanders supporters on the whole are sexist, but just.... dude you're a Sanders campaign worker. Maybe don't?)
posted by Sara C. at 6:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]


Rachel Maddow is lighting it up on the historic woman nominee topic right now FYI
posted by zutalors! at 6:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Of course, these days Objectivists are incredibly doctrinaire.

As opposed to the good ol days of Rand and Branden? Hardly a circle that welcomed the free exchange of ideas. Objectivism has always been ruthlessly doctrinaire.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I guess my point was that they've become more venomous and ingrown, if possible? There's a strain of Objectivism that's basically Rand Said it - I Believe It - That Settles It.
posted by stolyarova at 6:30 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


My Facebook is still a Bernie Truther no-fly zone. People I've regarded as reasonable for years are posting fevered theories about how their guy really won California in a landslide man, because the provisional ballots haven't been counted yet and we know for sure those were 100% for Bernie but of course the lamestream media won't tell you that wake up sheeple!!!
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:32 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


(Not saying that Sanders supporters on the whole are sexist, but just.... dude you're a Sanders campaign worker. Maybe don't?)

In this case, dude is a woman. I was going to say lady, but she clearly doesn't deserve the appellation.

As far as not worrying about it because it's a small number, Sanders got something around 40% of the primary vote, so we're talking at least 2% of the likely turnout in the general. That could be enough to swing it if it ends up being a close race, especially if Jill Stein ends up being a factor and another substantial portion of Sanders supporters end up sitting it out or voting for Johnson, as polling has also indicated is likely.

I'm not that worried about it yet, because Clinton should be getting something of a bump from her finally clinching the nomination and hopefully some will eventually be swayed if/when Bernie endorses, but it's still close enough that there is reason for at least some concern.
posted by wierdo at 6:33 PM on June 8, 2016


Bernie primary voters are a small fraction of the electorate

So, yeah, if someone is going to say "I will not vote for that bitch," maybe they're not the people to reach out to.

But Sanders voters number 12.2 million. That's pushing 10% of the combined votes Romney and Obama gathered in 2012.

Maybe Trump is such an abysmal candidate it won't matter. Maybe that alone will demoralize enough would-be Republican voters and energize Democrats and pick off swing voters. And there's always a cost-benefit analysis as to what it would take to get people on board.

But remember that a lot of the populace is already making lulzy jokes like "Giant Asteroid 2016" because they don't find anybody palatable at their level of engagement, and elections have swung on a lot less than 12 million. And then ask if it really seems smart to just write off as a bloc that many people who have actually registered and showed up in a primary.
posted by wildblueyonder at 6:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I will say this as someone in my mid50s and a Hillary supporter, the talk about emails is totally excusable because I think it must be something like my problems with installing programs....

I will say up front that this is not a hill I'm willing to die on, but there are other substantial problems with the Clinton private email server aside from insufficient encryption. Basically, the U.S. Secretary of State took affirmative, deliberate actions to set up a back-channel means of communication with her that was inaccessible to federal transparency measures like FOIA. It creates at least the appearance of petty corruption in the sense of unknown levels of access without leaving a trace, even if it doesn't prove grand corruption in the quid pro quo sense.

I know other people have done it and it's probably not a crime, but that doesn't change the point: the very common, semi-acceptable practice of high-level government officials setting up elaborate systems of off-the-record communication stinks of corruption. Both presidents since 2000 have voluntarily given up private email during their terms, and I think that's as it should be (remember that email wasn't even really a thing until the mid-90s - I don't know what Bill's email policy was).

Obviously I'm not going to refuse to vote for Hillary over it, or even hesitate to phone bank or work for Election Protection, but that doesn't make it just A-OK.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 6:37 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


I just think it's yet another example of putting heavy concern on what some mostly white male people think when they are an increasingly small part of the electorate, but still dominate our national discourse.
posted by zutalors! at 6:40 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


In this case, dude is a woman.

Women can also have sexist motivations.
posted by Sara C. at 6:41 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


That comment wasn't taking issue with it being sexist, it was taking issue with calling not-dude a dude.
posted by Justinian at 6:46 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]




It's a colloquialism, like saying "Man," or "Guys," or the like. I knew the speaker was female when I used the term "dude".
posted by Sara C. at 6:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [15 favorites]


I don't know about anyone else but personally, I've been hearing "dude" used as a gender neutral term pretty often over the last few years. Seems to mean "person" in my town more than it means "male."

YMMV, but that's my contribution to the this particular plate of beans.
posted by EatTheWeek at 6:53 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I was going to say lady, but she clearly doesn't deserve the appellation.

This isn't cool.
posted by biogeo at 6:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


The gender stuff could probably be dropped entirely in the name of not giving the mods yet another cleanup job in a political thread.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:12 PM on June 8, 2016 [22 favorites]


Hey, I'm really glad corb brought up the women's body armor topic - I'm watching the HRC interview with Lester Holt and she's wearing regular clothes, not the big boxy jackets.

It puts the expensive coats in perspective - if she wants to wear an expensive jacket over the body armor she has to wear because psychos want to kill her, I mean let her goddamnit.
posted by zutalors! at 7:17 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


The Bush administration set up their own secret email domain that isn't on the public record and they "somehow" lost 5 million emails related to the firing of 8 attorneys.

Just one of the minor clusterfucks from that administration, but if we listed them all, we'd be here for years.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


But Sanders voters number 12.2 million

Haven't a constant 70% or so been saying they'll vote for Hillary in the election? Even if that number stays static (based on historical experience it will probably grow), that still leaves a minority of a minority whose motivations are more extreme/nuanced/niche that... I'm not sure make sense for Hillary to spend a ton of energy on. That's not to say she shouldn't keep moving left, but rather that it's a bit exasperating to hear how she has to pander to people who call her sexist slurs and who are ok with Trump. Remembering that this 30% also includes registered democrats who basically always vote red in big elections (Dixie democrats), democrats in (true) non-swing red (and low electoral value) states like Montana, and democrats in reliably blue/Clinton states like New York...

I gotta agree that energy is probably better put towards anti voter suppression, voter turnout overall, and general pro Clinton anti Trump campaigning, than towards chasing the Sanders holdouts who would probably feel patronized and find the effort disingenuous anyway.
posted by Salamandrous at 7:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]




Trump's lead lawyer donated to Clinton after joining case

So, usually it's a bad idea to ascribe motivations to a lawyer based on their clients. You have the odd Liberty Counsel and Citizens United who push politically motivated cases basically exclusively, but 99% of the time a lawyer is doing his job and taking the clients as they come, or as they can pay. That guy is a nationally known defense lawyer at a corporate megafirm, and I'm sure he's happy to cash Trump's fee checks, which must be outrageous. But it doesn't say anything about his politics that he's representing Trump.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


The amusing part is how it undercuts Trump's ridiculous idea of bias. He's worried about race but not his own lawyer giving money to his biggest enemy. There is definitely no suggestion the lawyer is doing anything wrong of any kind.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:57 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


And then ask if it really seems smart to just write off as a bloc that many people who have actually registered and showed up in a primary.

So basically, the argument seems to be: "We will spend a year calling Clinton everything from a war criminal to obscenities, threaten her supporters with violence, misrepresent facts, threaten to disrupt the convention...and it is up to YOU to make US feel happy as members of the party."

Honestly, at this point the Democrats would be better off reaching out to moderates than appeasing the hardcore Sanders supporters. It's really up to them to start making the argument for what THEY being to the table, aside from an unimpressive number of votes.
posted by happyroach at 8:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


As opposed to the good ol days of Rand and Branden? Hardly a circle that welcomed the free exchange of ideas. Objectivism has always been ruthlessly doctrinaire.

I would imagine that radical leftists got more doctrinaire after the deaths of Lenin, Trotsky, and co., not during their lives. When the founder is around to influence ideology, doctrine is more free-flowing.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:07 PM on June 8, 2016


What the left brings to the table is a legitimate claim to economic interests of the American working class. If that means nothing to you, I agree -- there's probably very little we'll be able to work together on.
posted by an animate objects at 8:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have yet to see any evidence that hardcore Sanders fans represent "The Left" and lay exclusive claim to the American working class.
posted by zutalors! at 8:16 PM on June 8, 2016 [47 favorites]


Surfurrus: I cannot recommend strongly enough that you find and join one of the sekrit Hillary groups on Facebook. I'm a loudmouthed standup comedian and most people here know I am not shy about pronouncing my opinions.

Yet I am intimidated by the Bernie consensus on Facebook and its dominance in the standup comedy world in particular. There are many, very large private Hillary and it's a whole new world once you get inside one. I bet many people here could invite you in to one. I certainly will if you memail me.

BTW I've just started engaging publicly on Facebook. One local comic I know almost immediately went to very nasty personal attacks when he didn't have actual, you know, facts or arguments to defend his allegation that the Associated Press was conspiring for Hillary by calling her nomination Sunday.

He was clearly doing everything he could to inflict pain. When I persisted without responding in kind, he blocked me. Fucking baby.
posted by msalt at 8:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [14 favorites]


How Bernie Sanders Exposed the Democrats’ Racial Rift

"Though it might offend his uber-progressive supporters to hear this, the Sanders insurgency is largely a white revolution. All the talk about Sanders representing the future of the Democratic Party because of his overwhelming popularity among young people leaves out an important caveat: He couldn’t persuade minority voters to sign on. In many ways a Sanders victory, propelled by the least diverse states in the nation, would have been a step backward in American race relations. Now that Hillary Clinton has laid claim convincingly to the nomination with decisive wins in California and New Jersey, the party—and Bernie’s supporters—are at a crossroads. If they insist on maintaining their purist divide from Clinton, they will create a rift in the party that’s not just ideological, but racial."

The whole article is outstanding and I hope people do read it.
posted by zutalors! at 8:25 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


msalt, it's interesting that you say that: I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in comedy, and while I somehow hadn't made the association until your comment, they are the most outspoken pro-Bernie faction on my Facebook feed.
I think the timing of this election, with all the sexual harassment upheaval in improv, sketch and standup circles these days, is exacerbating tensions when it comes to Hillary vs Bernie supporters. (A lot of the latter are women, but that doesn't really detract from the gendered nature of a lot of the hostility I've witnessed.)
posted by Superplin at 8:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also from the article, this is a point other people have been making for a while, but I think it's important:

"That’s why Clinton’s full embrace of Obama during the campaign and her promise to improve, not dismantle, his policies was political brilliance in a Democratic primary in which a candidate can’t expect to win without a large share of the minority vote. The only way so many talented writers and political observers could miss the racial divide within the Democratic Party this election cycle is to either ignore the overwhelming data, or to forget (or pretend) that young, minority Democratic voters don’t exist."
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 8:46 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in comedy, and while I somehow hadn't made the association until your comment, they are the most outspoken pro-Bernie faction on my Facebook feed.

I think the timing of this election, with all the sexual harassment upheaval in improv, sketch and standup circles these days, is exacerbating tensions when it comes to Hillary vs Bernie supporters.
Yes. And at the same time, there are a lot of prominent female comics in LA standing tall for Hillary (Maria Bamford and Jackie Kashian, for example). If you're in LA there are some local private Hillary groups there, too that I'm not in but could connect you with.

Excellent point about all the sexual harassment upheaval. And just, more generally, the door has opened for female (and POC) comics in the last 3-4 years which is directly threatening the absolute dominance of white males.

I am convinced that much of the talk of "corruption" among some Berners is really a complaint about lost privilege.
posted by msalt at 8:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


The only way so many talented writers and political observers could miss the racial divide within the Democratic Party this election cycle is to either ignore the overwhelming data, or to forget (or pretend) that young, minority Democratic voters don’t exist."


Yes, as I said upthread, the focus was on white people and what they think. Frustrating.

I also really agree with this:

In many ways a Sanders victory, propelled by the least diverse states in the nation, would have been a step backward in American race relations.

I have to say as much as the Clinton campaign is expected to learn from "the left" as reflected in Sanders' campaign, I have yet to hear how progressives need to learn anything from this campaign about how to get minority support or even to understand that it's important. You can't have a candidate out there saying that the minority vote doesn't count. You can't just not have an Asian American chair because you didn't get around to it. Etc.
posted by zutalors! at 8:52 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


In the spirit of not rehashing the past 20,000 comments, lemme just say this feels like a catch-22. Either I'm a "hardcore Sanders supporter" who doesn't represent the left because I'm variously sexist, racist and anti-intersectional (even though all of those things with a heaping pile of class awareness are the whole point of why I am espousing the beliefs I'm espousing) and I don't deserve Hillary's vote because I'm being too difficult or whatever, ...

Or I'm part of the 70% of Bernie voters who don't get any concessions because I'll vote for Hillary to stop Trump either way and I'm not really the left any more than anyone else because Hillary and Bernie vote the same 96% of the time and so on.

I might identify as specifically anti-neoliberal, pro-single payer healthcare, pro-dramatic education reform, anti-war/intervention, pro-dramatic financial reform, pro-dramatic environmental reform, pro-dramatic campaign finance reform, plus women's rights, ending the drug war, and so on (it's almost going to be Sanders' platform verbatim with considerably more intersectional concern.)

And based on exhaustive discussion here, I don't think it's unfair to label the Clintons and Obamas "Neoliberal;" they are not what I would ever call the left, and they do not generally line up with some of the most important issues for me politically, and it bothers me immensely when it's argued unsubstantially that there is no meaningful difference between Clinton and Sanders for these and the thousands of aforementioned reasons.

So while I think it's totally ok to denounce Sanders and praise Clinton, I can't just sit around nodding my head while comments are made about how disposable the left's concerns are, or how we're just gonna get what we're gonna get, and all that.

If you wanna disagree with what the left is asking from its politicians, let's do that, let's go there. But Clinton can have the moderates, or she can have the left. She's not going to appease them both.
posted by an animate objects at 8:54 PM on June 8, 2016 [28 favorites]


What's interesting is that my friends circle/Facebook feed anecdata breaks down in the precisely the opposite fashion as has been widely reported: I'm a black woman, and the overwhelming majority of my PoC friends are pro-Bernie, while my white friends all lean toward Hillary and/or made the resigned shift sooner--and it's been evenly divided by gender. Possible contributing demographic factors of the pro-Bernie PoC crowd that I run with (who all feel frustrated that we continue to be largely erased in all reporting...): we're 33-50, mostly around 40, none of us counting as millennials; we have advanced degrees and are mostly in education, journalism/arts, medicine, or law; perhaps most tellingly, we're not religious. It's a infestimial sample size compared to the nation, sure, but still significant to me in that we're a couple of hundred people who just don't see ourselves anywhere in the reportage.

I am happy to report that my FB feed has been largely respectful and drama-free around our political choices (well, ignoring the few miguided Trumpers that crop up and That One Relative Whose Views Embarrass You), so maybe that makes us outliers in more than one way.
posted by TwoStride at 8:55 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


This isn't cool

This is all I'm going to say about it because we don't need the derail: To my mind, lady and gentleman are terms that are earned, by having among other things, the grace not to call a woman a bitch, especially in public. A person can record their disapproval of someone without using loaded terms or being an ass about it. Sorry if it came across differently.

Sara C.: Sorry to misread, among my (small) circle of friends/acquaintances dude is gender specific except when used as an exclamation. Consider my horizons broadened.
posted by wierdo at 8:59 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


That article is indeed pretty great. This is the point I wish more people would fully grasp:
To minority voters, Trump’s candidacy feels like an existential threat. It’s one thing for Republicans to either ignore or embrace his racism; the party already seems unwilling or incapable of making the kinds of adjustments it must to attract more non-white voters. It’s quite another for white Democrats to not appreciate how liberal minorities feel about the possibility of a Trump presidency and what that would say about the state of racial progress in America. It would be a slap in the face, the latest sign that a kind of white privilege—throwing a temper tantrum because they don’t get their way despite how much it hurts people of color—is deeply rooted within liberal, Democratic ranks as well.
posted by yasaman at 8:59 PM on June 8, 2016 [24 favorites]


It’s quite another for white Democrats to not appreciate how liberal minorities feel about the possibility of a Trump presidency and what that would say about the state of racial progress in America.

Yes! White people, this is why we are saying that Trump is scarier than Cruz and so on.
posted by zutalors! at 9:01 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Bernie or Buster's I know are not "Clinton is just as bad!" because they don't care about minorities. They literally believe that Clinton's policies will hurt minorities (who are overrepresented in the lower class groups that they see as being under existential duress from economic policies Clinton has pledged to continue) as much as anything Trump may do.

I disagree with them wholeheartedly on the matter, but they're not just anti Clinton because they're racist. At least not all of them.

Maybe the underlying reasons they have those intuitions are racially charged?
posted by an animate objects at 9:04 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


they're not just anti Clinton because they're racist

I don't know where you're seeing anyone asserting that.

Also though: it's a mistake to start out talking about minority issues as equal to economic issues. Big mistake, that I think the Sanders campaign just expected to work.
posted by zutalors! at 9:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


> Clinton addressed the Honduras question at length in her Daily News interview

Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez was at that interview. His take: Hillary Clinton's policy was a Latin American crime story

A response: "She's Baldly Lying": Dana Frank Responds to Hillary Clinton's Defense of Her Role in Honduras Coup
posted by homunculus at 9:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I was responding to yasaman's article above:

"...throwing a temper tantrum because they don’t get their way despite how much it hurts people of color—is deeply rooted within liberal, Democratic ranks as well."
posted by an animate objects at 9:10 PM on June 8, 2016


It's my perspective that if we don't work aggressively on both the economic *and* racial factors we'll improve neither condition. I don't believe race relations can improve if the country's social structure congeals into an actual oligarchy where white people hold all the power, money and influence, if that hasn't happened already. But I also don't believe race relations will naturally improve alongside economic conditions because obviously.
posted by an animate objects at 9:12 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


yasaman's article

I actually posted that article and I recommend reading all of it.
posted by zutalors! at 9:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


If you wanna disagree with what the left is asking from its politicians, let's do that, let's go there. But Clinton can have the moderates, or she can have the left. She's not going to appease them both.

I think part of the issue is that you're automatically assuming Sanders supporters and The Left are the exact same thing, when that is simply not true. His coalition is a very specific flavor of The Left. I wish people would stop saying Clinton is only appealing to moderates, when there are plenty of us on The Left who she is appealing to just fine, thank you.
posted by Anonymous at 9:28 PM on June 8, 2016


To my mind, lady and gentleman are terms that are earned, by having among other things, the grace not to call a woman a bitch, especially in public.

There may be a small subcultural/perspective difference around these terms, then. To my ear, saying that a woman "isn't a lady" and that a man "isn't a gentleman" actually imply very different things, because of all the cultural baggage around "proper" femininity and the madonna/whore dichotomy that just aren't there for men. Whether or not you intend it, I think a lot of people are going to read more into that kind of statement than just that she's graceless/disrespectful/etc. I don't think you're a sexist or anything, and I agree with and respect your distaste for this woman's speech, but I just don't like dividing women into "ladies" and "not ladies." Anyway, I agree about not wanting a derail over a relatively minor thing, but I just wanted to clarify exactly what I meant by "not cool." I'm happy to drop the point and I feel no animosity over it.
posted by biogeo at 9:36 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I wish people would stop saying Clinton is only appealing to moderates, when there are plenty of us on The Left who she is appealing to just fine, thank you.

A thousand times this and very well said. "Left" is a big label encompassing lots of ideologies and strategies. Insisting that your version of the Left is the only True Left pretty much dooms your political views to irrelevance.
posted by biogeo at 9:42 PM on June 8, 2016 [27 favorites]


The Sanders-Clinton base division question is full of hack punditry, so I might as well toss a theory in. Isn't it most a generational divide? On my own FB newsfeed of mostly costal twenty-somethings, there is mild support for Clinton, and mostly support for Bernie. One of the fiercest supporters of Sanders I know is an Asian American woman, who went canvassing for him. Another is a mixed-race woman who joked about discovering, to her displeasure, about a date voting for Clinton. Sure, sure, confirmation bias and anecdata and so forth. But without minimizing not erasing the experiences of those who have had bad experiences on social media for supporting Clinton- why assume your experience is universal? Yes, any harassment is intolerable and Sanders should have done a lot more to renounce it and self-police his campaign. Yes, this Democratic primary is definitely more bitter and brutal than the one from eight years ago. However, is abuse by Sanders fans universal? Or is it demographic specific?
posted by Apocryphon at 9:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Huh. I lost a female friend yesterday who is both a Bernie fanatic and a comedy scene hanger-on, and suddenly her utter refusal to disavow harassment I've received at the hands of her fellow fanatics makes more sense. Still very sad because she's otherwise hugely outspoken against harassment. But the penny has dropped.
posted by palomar at 9:48 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


This is just spitballing here, but I'm guessing the generational divide has something to do with older folks not really being enthused about a "revolution" bringing uncertainty upon their retirement plans, whereas the young are less risk averse since they have more time to hold out for the anticipated positive outcome.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:51 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


My theory is that without some sort of massive student loan forgiveness jubilee, and with current trends of wealth redistribution, the coming division in the Democratic Party is not between white and non-white, but between young and old.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:58 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


Isn't it most a generational divide?

Please note the racial divide punditry is backed up by polling and actual voter support. It's not theoretical. As for the generational divide, depending on the state young POC are either more mixed or lean Clinton--less vehement about support for her than older POC, but far from the extreme pro-Bernie slant one sees in young White voters.
posted by Anonymous at 10:06 PM on June 8, 2016


"I'm guessing the generational divide has something to do with older folks not really being enthused about a "revolution" bringing uncertainty upon their retirement plans, whereas the young are less risk averse since they have more time to hold out for the anticipated positive outcome."

Well, also, as you get older, you have many more chances to see the benefits of (well-executed) incremental change. Like, when I starting working on gay rights issues in my state (after law school), I pessimistically thought that gay marriage wasn't something I'd see in my lifetime. We were all about legal documents for hospital visitation and whatnot. TINY incremental changes at first, very slowly, clawing for every inch of advance, and then all at once it hit critical mass and we got gay marriage nationwide and there is a part of my brain that is STILL boggling over that. (Of course you also see how badly executed incrementalism can give away the store, or can let an issue die.)

You also see more grand schemes attempted as time goes by and like 95% of grand schemes (in politics and elsewhere) fail, and often it's not totally clear why, but you get a little more suspicious of grand schemes that don't come with detailed execution plans. I think that's part of why entrepreneurship of the wilder sort is for the young -- it's not just that it's easier for potential rewards to outweigh potential risks when you're younger and don't have a family to support or a retirement fund to lose, but that as you get older you start to understand the odds better and see how many Wild Ideas crash and burn, and it makes you more cautious about the odds of your idea's success.

I suppose that whether this is a cynical or prudent way to think about things probably depends on which side of it you're on. :)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:09 PM on June 8, 2016 [51 favorites]


Well, also, as you get older spend more time on Metafilter, you have many more chances to see the benefits of (well-executed) incremental change someone else post pretty much the same thing you were about to, but better.
posted by biogeo at 10:13 PM on June 8, 2016 [13 favorites]


Please note the racial divide punditry is backed up by polling and actual voter support. It's not theoretical. As for the generational divide, depending on the state young POC are either more mixed or lean Clinton--less vehement about support for her than older POC, but far from the extreme pro-Bernie slant one sees in young White voters.

Yeah, this passage, from the Poltico article zutalors! linked earlier, is very telling (especially in light of the oft-repeated (and apparently spurious) claim that Sanders was "winning" alll young people, including young people of color:
According to Reuters/Ipsos polling in February, the Vermont senator received his strongest support among black voters from those aged 18-29—but only a third of that group backed him. That’s right. For all the talk about Sanders’ unqualified young voter support, Clinton had a double-digit lead among the youngest black voters nationwide.
Of course I realize that statistic refers to only one subset of people of color, but it nonetheless should give pause to those who would claim the divide is primarily a generational one.
posted by dersins at 10:14 PM on June 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Mod note: We need to have exactly zero more discussions about how Berniebros suck. If you want to have those discussions, by all means avail yourself of the thousands of previous comments in previous election threads covering just that subject. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 10:15 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


How the Democrats Can Get Bernie to Stand Down:
The best approach for those trying to talk him down—a group that’s expanding to include some of his top surrogates—is not to keep badgering him about how he lost, and needs to concede, and then campaign unconditionally for Hillary Clinton. This will only fuel resentment that he’s not being treated respectfully. Instead, the first question President Obama and others should ask Sanders while meeting him is: What can we do to help ensure your movement doesn’t disappear?

The Sanders camp has already been fighting over the Democratic platform, the drafters of which held their first meeting Wednesday in Washington. That’s part of it. But Sanders is no dupe, and knows that the platform will just be sealed and crated off to some vast warehouse Raiders of the Lost Ark style if there’s no organization left to actualize the policies he fought to include in it.

Obama could offer to do everything in his power—not as president, but as a popular and well-connected Democrat—to help set up Sanders with a permanent infrastructure for his movement, an Organizing for America–type pressure group. (One that, unlike Organizing for America, wouldn’t have to subordinate its pressure activities to the political prerogatives of the Oval Office.) Or something else? Be creative!

Democrats see Sanders as a stubborn pest at this point, but they can’t just wish him away. They might as well give empathy a go. Sanders has won more than 10 million votes, is too old to run again, and is worried that everything he fought for—and everything that attracted the next generation of voters—will be forgotten as Clinton tacks rightward. That’s the level where he needs to be met. Dropping out right now is a win for Clinton and a loss for himself. Staying in through the convention and refusing to concede would be a loss for Clinton and a loss for himself. There’s no reason some arrangement can’t be struck to make this a win-win, with Clinton unifying the party and Sanders’ movement securing the future.
posted by overglow at 10:16 PM on June 8, 2016 [30 favorites]


I'm glad I support Gary Johnson, nobody ever gives you shit when you support cool guy Gary Johnson.

That's why I spent most of the primaries telling people I was voting for Martin O'Malley. Nobody knows what the fuck to say when you tell 'em you're voting for O'Malley.

Doubly so after he dropped out of the primary.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:18 PM on June 8, 2016 [20 favorites]


The cool thing about this year's election cycle is that if the youth vote really did organize and show up for midterm elections, you'll find that the idealism is no less cloaked in entitlement, tribalism, and anger as much as another demographic's. Beware what you wish for, those who seek their turnout. The moment the progressive fringe figures out that the solution is to run Sanders/Gabbard/Turner/Canova type candidates for high-profile down ticket races and primary establishment Democrats, and peel away the kids from their Snapchats and what have you and get them to vote, well, all bets are off.

it's not just that it's easier for potential rewards to outweigh potential risks when you're younger and don't have a family to support or a retirement fund to lose

Well, the economic disenfranchisement and the current younger generations being in the worst spot in a long time compared to prior ones helps to stoke that fiery rage, too.

Of course I realize that statistic refers to only one subset of people of color, but it nonetheless should give pause to those who would claim the divide is primarily a generational one.

LA Times: "Sanders leads Clinton among younger minority voters, as he does among younger whites, according to a new USC Dornsife / Los Angeles Times poll. Among Latinos under age 50, Sanders led 58% to 31%, the poll found. Among all younger minority voters, he led 59% to 32%. Clinton’s lead was large among older voters -- 64% to 20% among minority voters 50 and older, according to the poll."

Sanders won the POC youth vote in California by a considerable amount, so this might be why my social media bubble clashes so differently from others' in this thread.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:19 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


This will only fuel resentment that he’s not being treated respectfully.

I would have assumed 74-year-old Senator Bernard Sanders was a grown-ass adult, not a man-baby whose tender feelings need coddling.
posted by dersins at 10:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


PoliticalPolls @PpollingNumbers
May '08, WP/ABC poll 64% of Clinton supporters say they'd vote Obama

May '16, WP/ABC poll 71% of Sanders supporters say they'd vote Clinton
11:54 AM - 8 Jun 2016
-
PoliticalPolls @PpollingNumbers
@PostPolls in May '08 26% of Clinton supporters say they'd vote McCain

May '16 Post/ABCpoll 20% of Sanders supporters say they'd vote Trump

posted by Drinky Die at 10:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [10 favorites]


Is there a term for the opposite of a Bradley Effect yet
posted by Apocryphon at 10:29 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I would have assumed 74-year-old Senator Bernard Sanders was a grown-ass adult, not a man-baby whose tender feelings need coddling.

You work with the Bernie you've got, not the Bernie you wish you had.
posted by Anonymous at 10:29 PM on June 8, 2016


Whoa, this is one of the most devastating attacks ads I've ever seen. Donald Trump Lying to the Entirety of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41
posted by donatella at 10:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [9 favorites]


Sanders won the POC youth vote in California by a considerable amount

Median age is younger among minorities, so that probably means that young people (in particular young minorities) just didn't show up at the polls even when there's a candidate that specifically goes after them and that their peers are excited about.
posted by FJT at 10:34 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Did Sanders actively court the youth vote, or did they find him?
posted by Apocryphon at 10:37 PM on June 8, 2016


Is that a serious question?
posted by dersins at 10:39 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]


Perhaps not at first, but by the end? Yeah. And one could cynically argue the appeal to free college was courting the youth vote.
posted by Anonymous at 10:40 PM on June 8, 2016


The important thing is they found each other.
posted by FJT at 10:40 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]


That's so beautiful.
posted by biogeo at 10:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Let's not glorify technocratic incrementalism too much. It doesn't always produce a cultural sea change of progress.

Herbert Hoover tried technocratic incrementalist policies for four years and they did very little because the problems facing him were structural. Being a wonk's wonk didn't help him because the necessary steps were completely out of the mainstream consensus, and thus too radical.

Incremental policies for the last generation have seen access to abortion rolled back almost completely, whereas something more structural like the ERA may have protected them.

Incremental changes are not going to be sufficient to prevent global temperatures from rising 3 degrees celsius.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [20 favorites]


So basically, the argument seems to be: "We will spend a year calling Clinton everything from a war criminal to obscenities, threaten her supporters with violence, misrepresent facts, threaten to disrupt the convention...and it is up to YOU to make US feel happy as members of the party."

There's two conversations that can unfold here.

One is "Why The Other Candidate (and the people who supported him/her) made bad choices and are terrible human beings who should feel terrible. And why they should suck it up or fuck off."

It's understandable not to be much fond of the Sanders supporters who chose that route, but at the moment, a lot of people in this thread are in a really good position to understand the temptation to choose it, assuming a certain amount of capacity for introspection.

The other conversation is how to get along and work within a party of people who had/have overlapping goals if different priorities than you do. Even if you had a real fight, the kind a race for the presidency is likely to create.

If people think the Sanders camp could use encouragement to take the latter tack as much or more than the Clinton camp, I agree.
posted by wildblueyonder at 10:44 PM on June 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


And one could cynically argue the appeal to free college was courting the youth vote.

One would not need to be cynical at all to argue that.

The only reason to claim that the federal education budget should be spent on college instead of K-12 is to court people who are either in college or beginning to pay off student loans.

Prioritizing college over K-12 makes pretty much no actual sense from a "let's try to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people" standpoint.
posted by dersins at 10:45 PM on June 8, 2016 [35 favorites]


(Note: Yes, I get that it would have meant increasing the education budget to pay for free college, not that the existing budget would be repurposed. However, given that by any reasonable measure the current budget for K-12 is woefully inadequate, increasing the budget to pay for something new rather than increasing it to adequately fund existing programs amounts to the same thing.)
posted by dersins at 10:50 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


And one could cynically argue the appeal to free college was courting the youth vote.

At least he didn't promise free beer.
posted by bongo_x at 10:50 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


That was even a West Wing joke from their college tax plan episode (College Kids, 4x03):
JOSH
We're saying that books are tax deductible, too, right?

TOBY
I personally think that beer should be tax deductible
posted by zachlipton at 11:05 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


If Sanders promised to repeal the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and allow states to lower the minimum requirement to 18 years old it would be naked pandering, yes
posted by Apocryphon at 11:24 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Checked out /r/politics again. 7 of the top 10 stories are about the email server thing. I guess we're at the "bargaining" stage of grief.
posted by Justinian at 12:46 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


And one could cynically argue the appeal to free college was courting the youth vote.

Actually, as a parent of a 12 year old, the idea of charging sales tax on the sales of stocks and bonds, then using that revenue to fund higher education appealed a hell of a lot to ME.

Because I'd rather the guys who buy stocks and bonds pay their fair share of sales tax -- like everyone else -- than my daughter getting out of school owing a mortgage.
posted by mikelieman at 1:07 AM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


If Sanders promised to repeal the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and allow states to 18 years old

He advocated legal marijuana, though he's one of the few in his age group and social circle who did not regularly get high. Even his zipless single payer NHI and "wave a wand" banking reform only make sense if you're pretty young and are unaware that Congress has to agree and Republicans are allowed to oppose changes with gerrymandered congressional districts and unlimited money.

Not to mention, socialism's brand (or, as we use to call it, reputation) is pretty weak in all age groups over 30 because experience. (There's a reason Bernie was suddenly forgetful about Venezuela and Cuba when asked about their experiences with socialism.)

Sanders' entire campaign seemed very calculated to appeal to young voters IMHO.
posted by msalt at 1:59 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


That Slate article really resonated with me. I've never been a Bernie supporter, but it does seem wrong to ostracise his vision, his supporters, and him. Playing hardball doesn't feel like the right way to treat cousins within the Democratic party. And the reason I feel this way is Hillary's speech from the other night. Remember, it's about building bridges!

And I sympathise with Sanders, I really do. I can see how he might be feeling cornered and threatened - we must be able to see the good in his cause and help it survive and flourish.
posted by like_neon at 2:06 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


Sanders could have (and maybe still can) made a huge impact on down ticket races. Honestly he had this huge swell of support and if he doesn't direct it somewhere productive - like at getting politically sympathetic people elected at the state level especially - I forsee a bunch of engaged people just dropping out. That would be absolutely tragic.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:25 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I forsee a bunch of engaged people just dropping out. That would be absolutely tragic.

The DNC has to step up and keep engaging them like Bernie did. First steps after endorsing would be to start mailing out to his lists explaining how *everyone* is a stakeholder.
posted by mikelieman at 4:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


But the flipside is the DNC has to treat me like I am a stakeholder...
posted by mikelieman at 4:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


You and a few dozen million other Americans, yes.
posted by rorgy at 4:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


So basically, the argument seems to be: "We will spend a year calling Clinton everything from a war criminal to obscenities, threaten her supporters with violence, misrepresent facts, threaten to disrupt the convention...and it is up to YOU to make US feel happy as members of the party."

The fact that Trump will sing whatever horrible legislation a Republican Congress passes has already been remarked upon several times, including by me. So let's examine another fact that Sanders supporters might want to consider if they think a Trump presidency will help engender their revolution: If Trump is elected, he will get one SCOTUS pick right away, as McConnell's obstruction of Garland will have paid off. That returns the Court to its 5-4 split.

And then he'll likely get at least one more over four years, making for a solid conservative majority. At that point, Sanders' agenda is completely doomed. Even if a full-blown socialist government gets elected to the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2020 -- and fat chance -- the only thing keeping SCOTUS from striking down single payer and free tuition right away is how busy they'll be striking down the ACA, abortion rights, the Voting Rights Act, Title IX, the EPA, gun control, gay marriage and LGBT rights in general, access to birth control and a hots of conservative pet peeves, while upholding Christian prayer in public schools, unlimited money in political campaigns, favors for the extraction industries and everything on the conservative wish list.

Sanders' revolution will be impossible in the wake of a Trump presidency.
posted by Gelatin at 5:35 AM on June 9, 2016 [41 favorites]


The only reason to claim that the federal education budget should be spent on college instead of K-12 is to court people who are either in college or beginning to pay off student loans.

The states are supposed to pay for K-12.
posted by srboisvert at 5:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


This Cnn article asserts that the Trump campaign has very little general election infrastructure.
posted by rdr at 5:38 AM on June 9, 2016


Unfortunately one of the things this nomination season has exposed is that the current methodology for exit polling is largely garbage. California among other states exposed that exit polling in many cases has dramatically overstated Bernie's support among various key demographics.

I'm not sure that we can make conclusive statements about the exact nature of Bernie's support and how strong it is among certain demographics and exactly how many Bernie supporters are Bernie or Bust or worse that they'll shift support to Trump who is clearly in no way progressive.
posted by vuron at 5:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Beware what you wish for, those who seek their turnout. The moment the progressive fringe figures out that the solution is to run Sanders/Gabbard/Turner/Canova type candidates for high-profile down ticket races and primary establishment Democrats, and peel away the kids from their Snapchats and what have you and get them to vote, well, all bets are off.

I wish they would. Whatever progress a Democratic president can make, Sanders, Clinton or otherwise, will be hobbled if the Republicans do better in the midterm elections, as they often do.

Democrats need to -- and have needed to for years now -- do the work of running people for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, elected state offices, and judgeships -- and get out and vote for them. If the Sanders bloc stays home in 2018, it'll reinforce the perception that they aren't actually a reliable Democratic constituency, and rightly so.
posted by Gelatin at 5:52 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't think there was any exit polling in California. Also exit polling is pretty known to not be an accurate sample of voters, though news organizations don't make that clear.
posted by Anonymous at 5:53 AM on June 9, 2016


If the Sanders bloc stays home in 2018, it'll reinforce the perception that they aren't actually a reliable Democratic constituency, and rightly so.

Seems like that would make them pretty much as reliable as every other Democratic constituency.
posted by Etrigan at 5:56 AM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Jesus Christ now #exitpollgate is starting up.

This is going to be a long month and a half until Philadelphia.
posted by Talez at 6:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


If the Sanders bloc stays home in 2018, it'll reinforce the perception that they aren't actually a reliable Democratic constituency, and rightly so

Well Sanders wasn't a registered Democrat till 6 months ago so...
posted by PenDevil at 6:39 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


So, Sanders is meeting with Obama today?

I figure Obama clears the room and says, 1-on-1 (plausible deniablity): "Pull your head out of your ass right the hell now. It's over, we need to ensure Trump never sits at this desk, it's on you to talk your supporters off the ledge. You can report this meeting in the press however you want, but the end result has to be "I, Bernie Sanders, wholeheartedly support Hillary Clinton for President. Let's all work together to defeat Trump." Are we crystal clear?"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:41 AM on June 9, 2016 [18 favorites]


When the polls show a clear Clinton lead ahead of the vote, but then actual results give Bernie a decisive victory (Michigan), it's clear evidence that the media conspired to suppress voter turnout in the days before the election.

When the polls show a closer race, but then the actual results give Clinton a resounding win (California), it's clear evidence of fraud on the part of the DNC.

Parts of the left are turning (have turned?) into InfoWars level paranoiacs.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:44 AM on June 9, 2016 [39 favorites]




Have turned? Have always been. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Tea Party-level cognitive dissonance is solely a thing of the hard right.

The difference is that the hard right has found ways to forcefully wedge their desires into local, state and national politics. The angry people on the hard left are magnetically glued to Sanders because he's one of the only prominent left-wing politicians who's openly saying "I see you there."
posted by delfin at 6:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Jesus Christ now #exitpollgate is starting up.


Please. #exitpollghazi.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:56 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


B
Exitpoll
N
Gate
H
A
Z
I
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:04 AM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]




The fact that Trump will sing whatever horrible legislation a Republican Congress passes

Rage, Donald! Sing the rage of Gohmert's son Louie, that brought ostensibly health-based regulations upon the abortion providers!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:37 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


You see lunacy, I see a new era of bipartisanship: The left and the right coming together to both make unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. ACORN!
posted by 0xFCAF at 7:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


The conspiracy minded among the left have been paranoid about every lost election since 2000. Having an election actually stolen can do that to a person.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ellie Shectet: Laura Ingraham: Trump, Unlike Clinton, Can Shoot Wads of 'Magic Sauce' Onto Issues
“She’s a talented person, she’s very smart, but Trump has the magic sauce. He just has to sprinkle it on the issues, and then he has to serve it up in a very pleasing, interesting, and sometimes provocative and entertaining way.”
posted by zombieflanders at 7:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ugh, yeah, today I'm seeing Facebook posts linking to reports on dubious sites that Sanders won CA by a landslide and people working with Clinton committed voter fraud so two thirds of Sanders votes weren't counted, etc, etc.
posted by defenestration at 7:54 AM on June 9, 2016


And it's being pointed to as part of the struggle he's fighting as he continues his campaign.
posted by defenestration at 7:55 AM on June 9, 2016


The fact that Trump will sing whatever horrible legislation a Republican Congress passes

Muse, tell me of the man of many schemes,
the man who wandered many paths of real estate,
After he bankrupted AC's fair palace.
He saw the cities - golfed the courses - of many
And on the campaign, his spirit suffered
No adversity - to keep his fortune intact,
To Bring America Back.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:55 AM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]


Yes, and the mainstream media is supposed to be refusing to report on this massive fraud because the six corporations that own most of mainstream media are afraid of losing their special privileges...
posted by bardophile at 7:58 AM on June 9, 2016


Clearly Hillary and DWS are the sixth and seventh Illuminatus Primus members, play rhythm guitar and tambourine in the American Medical Association, and will perform the Rite of Shiva on national TV to summon the spirit of Stella Maris to be Hillary's running mate.
posted by delfin at 8:06 AM on June 9, 2016


roomthreeseventeen: Minnesota Republican Attacks Her Democratic Opponent For Being ‘LGBT’ And ‘Half Black’

OK so aside from her response later on in the article, what I love most about this story was this:

"Reached for comment, Maye Quade said that like many people, she first heard audio of Jimenez-Hopper’s remarks when they were detailed in a thecolu.mn report published Wednesday. She said she came across the article this morning while in bed with her wife Alyse."

lolol
posted by moody cow at 8:09 AM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]




Minnesota Republican Attacks Her Democratic Opponent For Being ‘LGBT’ And ‘Half Black’

I am slightly disappointed that she did not actually use ‘LGBT’ as an adjective instead of ‘gay’, as in: "Oh man, that shirt you're wearing? That is sooooo LGBT."
posted by sour cream at 8:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Saw this phrase just now, enjoyed it:
The new equivalent of medieval scholastic philosophers are the Republican senators insisting on heretofore unnoticed distinctions between different levels of support for a presidential candidate.
How many Trump endorsers can dance on the head of a pin, I wonder?
posted by clawsoon at 8:42 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


...I heard this a lot among diehard Bernie supporters in the campaign’s last days: Donald Trump is a madman, a bigot, a lunatic who is not fit for the presidency, but he wouldn’t be as bad as Hillary Clinton. They also say they wouldn’t support her even if Sanders endorsed Clinton, which they don’t expect he’ll do because he’s a man of “authenticity.” (Maybe all the accusations of election theft, including implications from the candidate himself, play some role in this view.) “People will say ‘vote for Hillary to defeat Trump’ and to me they’re both trash,” Angel Villasenor, a 32-year-old Latino man who actually supported Clinton in the 2008 primary, told me as he entered the Sanders event. As for Trump: “I think he’s a terrible person, a terrible human being, I don’t support him at all,” he said. But he’s probably not that dangerous. “It has no legs, it’s just nonsense,” Villasenor said of Trump’s xenophobic anti-Mexican rhetoric and policy proposals. “He’s using that as a platform to get all those racist folks behind him.”
Never Hillary
posted by y2karl at 8:44 AM on June 9, 2016


However, given that by any reasonable measure the current budget for K-12 is woefully inadequate

As pointed out above, states and counties pay for K-12 education, Sanders proposes federal funding for public universities.

Also, many states expend perfectly acceptable per-pupil rates of funding for K-12 education (current national average is over $12K/student annually). How that funding is spent is far more often the problem than total funding available.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:46 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I mean, I don't think that Hillary Clinton's winning the nomination was rigged in any way purposefully, but voter disenfranchisement is a huge issue that we need to address. We need to get the Voting Rights Act fixed. And thousands of people are being removed from the voter rolls. It happened in every state. So I get why people feel upset.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean, I don't think that Hillary Clinton's winning the nomination was rigged in any way purposefully, but voter disenfranchisement is a huge issue that we need to address. We need to get the Voting Rights Act fixed. And thousands of people are being removed from the voter rolls. It happened in every state. So I get why people feel upset.

Voter disenfranchisement is a huge issue *because Republicans are doing it on purpose*. That's what's so GRAR-y to me about any Sanders supporter turning Trump on the basis of supposed dark-secret DNC vote suppression. You're going to protest that... by supporting the party that is actively passing laws to suppress the vote along racial lines. Right.

You know the old .gif where one cat smacks the other cat from behind and walks away, and the victim cat wheels around and attacks a third, bystander cat?

I can do cat .gif electoral commentary all day, just watch me
posted by saturday_morning at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2016 [43 favorites]




roomthreeseventeen: Agreed. It's the insistence that all of this is the result of $hillary and the crooked DNC conspiring to deny Bernie the nomination that was rightfully his that I find frustrating. Not that you're saying that, this is from the people I was referring to before.
posted by bardophile at 8:59 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, if the VRA is your concern job #1 should be electing more Democratic legislators, rather than GRARing about Sanders v. Clinton.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:59 AM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Also, if the VRA is your concern job #1 should be electing more Democratic legislators, rather than GRARing about Sanders v. Clinton.

Oh, for sure. But people read headlines about people being dropped from voter roles and make all sorts of assumptions without doing the reserach on why it's happening.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:02 AM on June 9, 2016


Personally, I wasn't taking about discussions of or disseminations of articles about vote suppression. I agree that should be dealt with, and is definitely a problem.

I was talking about people sharing convenient articles that posit batshit insane theories that are in no way founded in reality. And then double-down by saying you're only hearing about it on whatever dubious site because everyone is in on it, the media included. This is paranoid, dangerous thinking.

Responding to concerns about claims like that by talking about actual vote suppression issues is sorta like saying "I get why people are concerned about a vast, fraudulent Sanders conspiracy keeping people from participating in caucuses because there is a genuine concern that a large amount of the populace don't have the time or physical ability, etc, to take part in them." It doesn't map directly, but I hope you get what I mean.
posted by defenestration at 9:11 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


the establishment doesn't need to corrupt the election, it just needs to corrupt the people
posted by pyramid termite at 9:12 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm calling it now. It will be "cool" to like Hillary in about four months in the same hipstery way it's cool to like Michael McDonald and Steely Dan. "Yo these songs are so square, I can't believe people used to listen to them!"

*hits start on "Aja" for seventh time in a row*
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Muse, tell me of the man of many schemes,
the man who wandered many paths of real estate...
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:55 AM on


Epony-reprise-ysterical?
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:18 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


So...Sanders requested today's meeting with Obama, apparently. What would they be discussing that he shouldn't have asked to meet with Clinton instead? Is it because if he was going to meet with Clinton people would presume he was conceding (if so, do it secretly)? It just seems like if he's going to ask for concessions / power at the convention / help with the campaign debt / whatever, that's something he should be discussing with the nominee.

I guess it's hard for me not to see this through the lens of "man turns to other man in room even though the woman in the room is the one he needs to talk to."
posted by sallybrown at 9:20 AM on June 9, 2016 [31 favorites]


Great, now I want a Yacht Rock style re-enactment of the 2016 primaries.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


*hits start on "Aja" for seventh time in a row*

I absolutely will not stand for any talk of Aja being less than excellent.
posted by sallybrown at 9:21 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


(It's immensely cool that Peta Lindsay has a connection to this thread. I was a high schooler when she protested the war, and seeing her made me feel like I was not crazy or alone in a world of grown ups going blindly along with it. Thank you to Peta!)
posted by sallybrown at 9:25 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


You call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Bernie Blues...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:25 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


as anecdata, nearly every bernie supporter i know - minus the few weird conspiracy theory types - sees his campaign as merely a jumping-off point for challenging the neoliberal consensus via activism and downticket races from here on out. so that gives me hope that my cohort (millennials) will continue to get involved in politics, especially at the local levels.
posted by burgerrr at 9:29 AM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


Are there funds in the Super PAC?
Yes there's funds in the Super PAC
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:31 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


On further thought I would love it if Sanders went to meet with Obama to ask for concessions and Obama pulled a "my dad at the car dealership" and said "I'm not the one you should be talking to, SHE is" and handed him the phone.
posted by sallybrown at 9:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [20 favorites]


As pointed out above, states and counties pay for K-12 education, Sanders proposes federal funding for public universities.

States pay for public universities too. If you're going to start federalizing, K-12 remains the more pressing need.
posted by msalt at 9:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Sanders is speaking now, just finished his Obama meeting. So far it's a stump speech, with a word of thanks to Obama/Biden for their impartiality during the primary.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:35 AM on June 9, 2016


I guess it's hard for me not to see this through the lens of "man turns to other man in room even though the woman in the room is the one he needs to talk to."

Try the lens of "President of the United States asks political ally to act in the interest of the country."
posted by vibrotronica at 9:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sallybrown - while I think your point is totally valid and it struck me weird as well at first, I know that Obama called Sanders on Monday. We don't know what happened during that call and I can see all sorts of scenarios involving saving face for Sanders that might have happened. So, take it all with a grain of salt.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:37 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Try the lens of "President of the United States asks political ally to act in the interest of the country."
posted by vibrotronica at 9:36 AM on 6/9


As I stated, it's been reported that Sanders is the one who requested the meeting, so...nope!
posted by sallybrown at 9:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Those sirens in the background are exactly how I feel watching Bernie speak every minute he doesn't endorse Clinton.
posted by stolyarova at 9:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Oh for fuck's sake he's being a Caifornia vote truther
posted by saturday_morning at 9:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Not dropping out. Looking forward to the full vote count in California and DC primary on Tuesday
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:38 AM on June 9, 2016


On the other hand, he did say "I look forward to working with Clinton to defeat Trump" (phrasing may be inexact) which is better than what I feared.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:39 AM on June 9, 2016


I look forward to meeting soon with Hillary Clinton to discuss how we can defeat Trump.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:40 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


RICK

Sirens are how I feel inside
posted by zutalors! at 9:41 AM on June 9, 2016 [19 favorites]


I'm calling it now. It will be "cool" to like Hillary in about four months in the same hipstery way it's cool to like Michael McDonald and Steely Dan. "Yo these songs are so square, I can't believe people used to listen to them!"

Melissa at Shakesville has already noticed something similar:

I've been making the case for quite some time, ahem, that Clinton is a savvy politician and a great candidate and a likeable person who is liked by many people who like her.

But, in the same familiar pattern that happens with all sorts of feminist writing, any woman who says something for years and years, who establishes herself as an expert on a subject, gets pegged as uncredible—compromised by virtue of her womanhood and attendant "lack of objectivity."

I'm just a stupid shill. But some rando non-feminist dude suddenly notices that Hillary Clinton is not, in fact, history's greatest monster, and he's instantly credible. He says the same shit I've been saying, and suddenly he's the belle of the fucking ball.

posted by emjaybee at 9:42 AM on June 9, 2016 [28 favorites]


Oh for fuck's sake he's being a Caifornia vote truther

I don't think he's saying he'll win CA, actually. Clinton built up a huge lead in early/absentee voting, but CA in-person voting is notorious for taking a long time, and could really close the difference. Not that I think he'll end up winning (or winning in DC next week), but I wouldn't call it trutherism.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


He's not going to win DC, it's heavily minority and I'm surprised he's even counting it.
posted by zutalors! at 9:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's truther-y in the context of the THIRTEEN MILLION REGISTERED VOTES MISSING OMG pages I'm seeing passed around today.
posted by stolyarova at 9:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Fair enough, zombieflanders. Spoken in haste.

But I still don't like the fact that he decided to cast any doubt on the CA results, because it is the kind of thing that will strengthen dead-enders' convictions that the primary is somehow rigged, and we don't need that. The DC primary, fine, contest it to your heart's delight.

On quick edit, what stolyarova said.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:47 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


a principled stand for counting every vote

And that's a dogwhistle to his supporters. They hear "Clinton and the ESTABLISHMENT don't care about your vote!"
posted by stolyarova at 9:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


That comment wasn't taking issue with it being sexist, it was taking issue with calling not-dude a dude.

In Southern California, "dude" is a gender-neutral noun. Hell, "bro" is also basically gender-neutral, at least here in Hipsterville (Silverlake/Echo Park).
posted by sideshow at 9:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Is Bernie angling for a Clinton VP pick? That sounds insane even to my ear...but?
posted by agregoli at 9:58 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ehhhhh. I've finally caught up with the speech, and I don't think that's what he's doing. He's already stated 1) that he's planning to work with Clinton, and 2) he wants to bring issues of importance to the convention rather than a fight.

FWIW, I've expressed my concerns about how this would end, and what I'm hearing from him right now is going a long way towards putting those concerns to rest.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:59 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


I just want it really over. The Sanders Campaign has gotten pretty incoherent. I feel like most people are seeing that and starting to get it together behind HRC in a satisfying way.
posted by zutalors! at 10:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


I think the language he used was something along the lines of 'I will be competing the DC primary, the last primary...to make that point that I am strongly of favor of DC statehood...[comparison to Vermont's population and statehood].'

I could have totally misheard that (those sirens!), but it sounds like he might be (stress on might) be framing this as a principled stand for counting every vote, not actually counting on it to narrow the gap.


I'll go farther and say that I do think that in Bernie's mind this is entirely about making a principled stand that every vote should count equally, no matter when in the primary process it might be cast.

I have always had, and continue to have, utmost confidence that Bernie will endorse Hillary Clinton and support her defeating Trump.
posted by meinvt at 10:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


I look forward to meeting soon with Hillary Clinton to discuss how WE can defeat Trump.

looking to leverage his supporters in a bid for the VP job?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:17 AM on June 9, 2016


Yeah, say what you want about the guy but to exaggerate him as "he's so bitter and such a rabid woman-hater that he's going to throw the country to Trump out of spite" is just histrionic. "Sander's going to debate Trump and really weaken Hillary somehow! He's going to run third party and pull a Nader!" The campaign has been brutal but it's not as if anyone on the Dems side has lost their strategic minds c'mon
posted by Apocryphon at 10:18 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


I have always had, and continue to have, utmost confidence that Bernie will endorse Hillary Clinton and support her defeating Trump.

I am very much looking forward to sharing that conviction. My confidence in his judgment has been badly shaken over the last couple weeks and I'm legit not sure which way he's gonna jump and it has me nervous as hell. I used to trust him, so I'm trying to remember what that felt like.

I'm also trying to make sure I do the responsible thing and get stoned before engaging with social media in any way. My town is a perfect storm of Sanders-friendly demographics and the degree of paranoid fantasizing has hit or exceeded Tea Party levels of unhinged. I get too tempted to talk about reality if I see that shit when sober, and of course reality is the last thing someone working through that Denial / Anger / Bargaining cycle is interested in.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:22 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Is Bernie angling for a Clinton VP pick? That sounds insane even to my ear...but?"
If he is then he can fuck right off. The handful of entitled white manchildren who would be convinced by a Shillary/Sanders ticket but not a ticket without him after enabling the bullshit loose association game for so long don't matter to this country nearly so much as the inclusive statement brought by a Clinton/Castro ticket. Hell, I'm a white male socialist under 30, but I at least seem to be the only one on my facebook feed capable of seeing that this election isn't actually about me. This election is about us and if he thinks he can attempt to steal the VP job from a far more qualified Latino man with threats having failed in his attempt to steal the presidency from a woman with superdelegates, that would certainly be one hell of another end to socialism as a viable political view in the United States.
posted by Blasdelb at 10:23 AM on June 9, 2016 [24 favorites]


Apart from all other issues, 68-year-old Clinton is not going to pick a 74-year old as her VP. Frankly, I think 66-year-old Elizabeth Warren is too old to be a good choice even (even if I didn't think she would be far more effective staying in the Senate.) It's a little strange to be electing people who are nearly retirement age in the first place, much less picking that for backup (and potential successor.)
posted by tavella at 10:27 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Yeah, no, she a Clinton/Sanders ticket gives her no advantage in the general. Reasonable Bernie supporters are going to vote for her and unreasonable Bernie supporters are not going to be pacified with a VP spot. Hell, all the shit Warren is already getting because her name is being floated as a potential VP pick proves that there is no progressive who is progressive enough for a subset of angry Bernie supporters.

Better to focus on strengthening existing support, like Latinxs, which is why Castro would be a great pick.
posted by lydhre at 10:32 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


So...Sanders requested today's meeting with Obama, apparently.

I am of course engaging in wild speculation, but I strongly suspect that publicly stating Sanders requested the meeting was a way for the White House to let him save face and avoid the impression that he was summoned to the principal's office for a talking-to.

I also suspect that we'll never really know what the conversation was, though it wouldn't surprise me if it was something along the lines of:

OBAMA: You can tell people whatever you feel like about how this meeting went, and you can spin it however you feel is advantageous to you, but you WILL get your shit together, you WILL get your people in line, and and you WILL full-throatedly back Clinton by [deadline].

SANDERS: Yes, Mr. President.
posted by dersins at 10:32 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


I couldn't really remember (or blocked out) how it went down 8 years ago, but I find this article really interesting and worth considering in terms of how we talk about/remember the point at which the candidates drop out and what we consider a full endorsement:
"On June 7, 2008, Clinton finally ceded the democratic nomination to Obama. Her speech, however, did not reflect a full-throated endorsement of her former rival. This did not come until August 27, 2008, when she stood on the floor of the Democratic Convention and moved that the delegate count be suspended."

(Written before the last round of primaries so the "Bernie can still win" is... not so much, but the rest is worth noting).
posted by TwoStride at 10:33 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Privately I'm imagining Obama skipping Luther, Anger Translator, and moving to full-blown Malcolm Tucker. Mainly because I want to believe that Malcolm Tucker exists in real life, and is also Obama.
posted by rorgy at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Is Bernie angling for a Clinton VP pick? That sounds insane even to my ear...but?

No but--speculating wildly again--it wouldn't surprise me if we hear at some point that he was offered the VP slot and turned it down because he felt he could do more good by doing [X].

Not because that happened, but because it's a way for him to save face.
posted by dersins at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Why be veep when there's so many perfectly good other cabinet positions one can be appointed to, not to mention the Supreme Court? This isn't specifically about Sanders, it's about any situation where there's a speculated deal. I mean, Obama didn't make Clinton his VP. The VP is virtually a prestige role.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2016


Keith Ellison!
posted by museum of fire ants at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Am I the only one who wants four more years of VP Biden? If it ain't broke don't fix it.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


This election is about us and if he thinks he can attempt to steal the VP job from a far more qualified Latino man with threats having failed in his attempt to steal the presidency from a woman with superdelegates, that would certainly be one hell of another end to socialism as a viable political view in the United States.

See, to me, this is a weird comment. Sanders inspired a lot of young people, and is perfectly qualified. Let's not get into the whole "any random Latino is better". Thanks.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


The VP is virtually a prestige role.

If it's a 50:50 senate (which is not beyond the realm of possibility) the VP might actually serve a use in the 115th.
posted by Talez at 10:37 AM on June 9, 2016


Julian Castro is anything but a "random Latino".
posted by lydhre at 10:37 AM on June 9, 2016 [23 favorites]


If the Senate is going to flip, don't people want Sanders to stick around in the Senate, where he can actually... do things? Same goes for Warren. I feel like people float VP pick ideas based on "this is a person I like and have heard of" rather than "this is a choice that would make any strategic sense."
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:39 AM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


Julian Castro is anything but a "random Latino".

But the quote was a far more qualified Latino man. Nobody said Julian Castro. The VP spot should go to a person, not a category.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:40 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sure, but any reliable Democrat can do tie breaking.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:41 AM on June 9, 2016


In comparing Clinton's concession to Sanders, note that Clinton was a hell of a lot closer, including leading in the popular vote. Sanders has been out of the running in practical terms for months, so he's had a lot more time to come to terms with it. I'm still hopeful that he'll come to his senses, but my already much decreased respect for him continues to go down.
posted by tavella at 10:41 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Nobody said Julian Castro.

Er, the quote you are responding to includes Castro in the same paragraph.
posted by tavella at 10:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


The whole Nevada thing was a real turning point for me as far as thinking whether Sanders would make a good president. Standard disclaimer that most of the actual Sanders voters I personally know of are absolutely the best, nicest people, but there was a real ugly element to his base of support that came to the fore there and his unwillingness to be a leader and at least try to rein that in or redirect it left me feeling like no, he wouldn't make a good president, it takes more than holding the right policies and opinions to be a good leader, and thanks but please don't make him VP.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [19 favorites]


It's too bad Kamala Harris is just going to be joining the senate (most likely - replacing Barbara Boxer) next year. She's pretty freaking awesome.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Julian Castro is anything but a "random Latino".

But the quote was a far more qualified Latino man. Nobody said Julian Castro. The VP spot should go to a person, not a category.


Blasdelb brought up the Clinton/Castro ticket in that same comment. No one said that Castro is a "category" or "random Latino" but you. Let's watch how we speak here, please.
posted by zutalors! at 10:44 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


Oh hey, outspoken transphobe Roseanne Barr just came out in support of Trump, in an interview that included a rant about the "illegals." With self-described leftists like these...
posted by duffell at 10:44 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Am I the only one who wants four more years of VP Biden? If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Cosigned. Don't go, Joe! He might be the last politician left with a message that has mandate-level appeal.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


My bad, I did not see the words.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'd like the VP to be some low-profile member of the House no one has ever heard of who will just stay in the background and let people ignore him/her for the next four years.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2016


Let's not get hyperbolic here -- Sanders has been in Congress since betore Julian Castro could vote, and he had already been a mayor longer than Castro was. Castro isn't "far more qualified" for the vice presidency.
posted by Etrigan at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


How is Castro far more qualified than Bernie? I think Castro would be a great choice, he's who I predicted Clinton would pick. But I don't see how his qualifications are so much better than Sanders.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


>>The only reason to claim that the federal education budget should be spent on college instead of K-12 is to court people who are either in college or beginning to pay off student loans.

>>The states are supposed to pay for K-12.


Well, in the US, public universities are run at the state level, not the federal level. That's why we have the University of California and Texas State University, not the University of the United States.

Sanders' plan for "free college" (somewhat simplified) is:

--get a tax increase through Congress to raise roughly $40B every year which would be offered to states to use for tuition. That amount of money covers roughly 2/3 of the cost of tuition for every student at a public state university.

--the money would be offered to the states with many strings attached, including what kinds of professors teach students and how well they are paid. These are real issues -- there are adjuncts and TA's teaching at universities who are criminally underpaid, but requiring universities to pay them more effectively decreases the % of student tuition that $40B represents

--it would then be on the states to come up with

-- and pass through their (often republican-controlled) state legislatures

-- the remaining roughly 35% of funds required to make tuition free for students

So the plan is essentially Obamacare for state universities, except Obamacare offers federal funding of 90% of the cost, not 60%.

Realistically, if all this were enacted, a handful of very-liberal states would opt in, but most would not, so for a majority of students at public universities (and of course all private universities) college would still be paid and very expensive.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


Kamala Harris is pretty freaking awesome and I'm very excited that she'll (probably) be moving on to the Senate. Who knows, maybe a 2024 run for the White House?
posted by malocchio at 10:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sanders would be a better choice for the VP slot. I just don't know why he'd want it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


If I were Bernie Sanders I'd ask to have dinner with the Obamas for a week, milk it for all I can.
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]




How is Castro far more qualified than Bernie? I think Castro would be a great choice, he's who I predicted Clinton would pick. But I don't see how his qualifications are so much better than Sanders.

I wouldn't say he's more qualified, necessarily - his qualifications are just different. Representing a state in Congress and occupying a Cabinet position are both national-level positions, but the goals of those positions aren't the same at all, and I think Sanders' longevity in his position should be balanced against the fact that a Cabinet position means running a nation-wide bureaucracy within the Executive branch, rather than representing a single state in a different branch.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


McConnell: "With regard to Donald Trump’s utterances over the past week, I disagree with all of them"

I think Republicans are gonna have to get used to that phrase.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:54 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


If I were Bernie Sanders I'd ask to have dinner with the Obamas for a week, milk it for all I can.

All I want in life now is a still-photo montage of Sanders hanging out with the Obamas for a week of summer vacation
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:55 AM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]




All I want in life now is a still-photo montage of Sanders hanging out with the Obamas for a week of summer vacation

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right
I hope you had the campaign of your life
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:57 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]






All I want in life now is a still-photo montage of Sanders hanging out with the Obamas for a week of summer vacation

Concessions, all I ever wanted
Concessions, had to have my say
Concessions never should be made alone
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:59 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Obama endorsement video directly reaches out to Sanders supporters while thanking Sanders for fighting for issues.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:02 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've been trying to avoid saying it, and maybe this belongs in talk, so delete this with my apologies if so, but. The tone in here has gotten just... gross and sad of late. The insane hyperbole and unabashed projection and just general mean-spiritedness.... We can do so much better.
posted by eyesontheroad at 11:04 AM on June 9, 2016 [29 favorites]


The timing of Obama's endorsement is so weird. Did the meeting with Sanders go well? Terribly? I have no idea.
posted by Justinian at 11:05 AM on June 9, 2016


I can't imagine he didn't tell Sanders well ahead of time that this was coming.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


If I were Bernie Sanders I'd ask to have dinner with the Obamas for a week, milk it for all I can.

Day 2:

INT. WHITE HOUSE RESIDENCE DINING ROOM - NIGHT

The FIRST FAMILY, hating the world, pick idly at their food, while BERNIE SANDERS, seemingly jacked up on amphetamines, attempts to attract the attention of a SMALL BIRD at the window. A long awkward silence ensues. Eventually, someone feels compelled to speak.

Michelle: Sure getting hot out there
Barrack: Eh
(overlapping)
Bernie: I'll tell you what's hot. The political revolution is getting hot.
Sasha: Damn straight

MALIA rolls eyes. MICHELLE rolls eyes. BARRACK rolls eyes.

Bernie: The 1% has /
Barrack: I think we already went over this last night
Michelle: And what kind of tax rate are you going to charge me anyway?
Sasha: But mom it's not about that it's about. (stops abruptly)

The FIRST FAMILY realize that SANDERS has attracted six SMALL BIRDS to his dinner plate and is encouraging them to eat. MICHELLE looks at BARRACK as if to say: "you deal with this."

Barrack (gently): Er, I don't think the Park Service wants birds in here
Sanders: You see, the political revolution I'm building is going to...
Michelle (sotto voice to Barrack): How many more days is this guy going to be here?

SASHA stomps her foot. MALIA gets up and walks out.

Barrack: It's for the country dear. For the country.

BARRACK attempts to dunk A COOKIE into a glass of milk. It doesn't fit. He dies a little inside.
posted by zachlipton at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2016 [38 favorites]


The timing of Obama's endorsement is so weird. Did the meeting with Sanders go well? Terribly? I have no idea.

Based on his tie, it looks like Obama recorded the endorsement video on Tuesday
posted by pocketfullofrye at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


The timing of Obama's endorsement is so weird. Did the meeting with Sanders go well? Terribly? I have no idea.

I assume the endorsement was on hold until after he told Sanders he would be endorsing her immediately after they met.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why is it weird? Clinton has clinched the nomination, Obama promptly endorsed her.
posted by tavella at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [11 favorites]


Chances are he wanted to at least give Sanders a private conversation before that video went out. Maybe Sanders asked for the meeting to forestall that endorsement. I dunno. But I honestly wondered if he went straight from meeting Sanders to filming that video. If he did, he at least had the sense to wear a different tie.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


He looked so happy to be making that endorsement.
posted by zutalors! at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




McConnell: "With regard to Donald Trump’s utterances over the past week, I disagree with all of them"

Aaaaaand another Clinton campaign ad is born.
posted by Gelatin at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


The guns rights people were certainly voting for Trump anyways, but now they get a more tangible reminder.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Peg": great Steely Dan song, or greatest Steely Dan song?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted; let's keep it cool in here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Three minutes apart
posted by Roommate at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


Peg actually probably is the greatest.
posted by Golem XIV at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2016


President Obama has endorsed.

From the video: "...Those are the values that unite us as Democrats. Those are the values that make America great."

TARGET ACQUIRED
posted by psoas at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2016 [26 favorites]


Anyways I took a few threads off because the primaries were stressing me out, but I agree with eyesontheroad that it's weird to see this sort of discussion. As someone who voted for Bernie narrowly and is excited about Hillary, I don't see any cause for worry. Bernie seems to be slowly winding down in a respectful way, and in a way that eases the transition for his base of supporters that might need more coaxing than usual to come around. The fact that people want him to admit defeat right away doesn't help that, but he's barely pushing back against the narrative. Just let him wind down in peace.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:14 AM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


I'm looking forward to the first State of the Union where Michael McDonald stands behind Hillary and sings the last word of each sentence.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Obama to Sanders: "Are you with me Dr. Wu? Are you really just a shadow of the man that I once knew?"
posted by AJaffe at 11:17 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


The whole Nevada thing was a real turning point for me as far as thinking whether Sanders would make a good president.

This is actually where he lost my CA primary vote. Not so much about him personally, since I've known for months that CA would not decide the nominee, and that it would be Hillary. I had decided to vote Sanders for the primary because I agree most with his policies and because I think it's important to send a strong progressive message to the DNC.

And then it became clear that the Sanders campaign wasn't going to stand down or behave themselves in any way, and I realized that my vote would be for an understanding that Clinton is the presumptive nominee and it's time to get behind her to beat Trump.

Considering how Clinton's numbers ultimately didn't match the polling, I'm wondering how many other Californians felt this way.
posted by Sara C. at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


Am I the only one who wants four more years of VP Biden? If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Cosigned. Don't go, Joe! He might be the last politician left with a message that has mandate-level appeal.


Joe Biden Writes An Open Letter To Stanford Survivor
I do not know your name—but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages.

Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out—for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity.

And I am filled with furious anger—both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

It must have been wrenching—to relive what he did to you all over again. But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else. Your bravery is breathtaking.

You are a warrior—with a solid steel spine.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:22 AM on June 9, 2016 [79 favorites]


AP- BREAKING: Federal appeals court says people do not have right to carry concealed weapons in public under 2nd Amendment.

Funny thing is, the ruling doesn't even say "people can't carry concealed in public" - it just says you have to demonstrate some sort of actual reason for it, a restriction which many states already have.

However, it looks like the objection in California specifically is that they also ban open-carry, and if it is basically impossible to get a concealed-carry permit (both of these decisions are made at the state level), then that effectively removes the ability to carry a firearm outside one's home at all, which could be interpreted to infringe on the 2nd Amendment. We'll see!

(As an aside - I remember an old-timer who used to carry an unloaded handgun when he traveled, and he talked about having to stop right at state lines and, for example, transfer the handgun from his trunk to the seat next to him or vice versa, in order to comply with each state's laws.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:27 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




I'm grateful that my fellow California voters and the voters in the other states made it a decisive win for Clinton on Tuesday. She would've won with closer results, even if Sanders had managed to win California (unless he won 80% or so, which wasn't going to happen). It's better that we had a clear winner.

I wish the superdelegates hadn't announced for Clinton over the weekend and the AP hadn't called it for her. It would've been better if they'd waited until after she won the majority of pledged delegates on Tuesday.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Delete your account.

Ha! That's amazing.
posted by zutalors! at 11:30 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Delete your account.

Omg. I can barely process this. Clinton's campaign must have an entire Meme Committee.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2016 [30 favorites]


So Sanders is already conceding the Dank Meme demographic?
posted by zombieflanders at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


Delete your account.

PogChamp
posted by Talez at 11:32 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Jinx!
posted by zombieflanders at 11:32 AM on June 9, 2016


If Bill Clinton was 'the first black president' and Obama was 'the first gay president' then I guess Hillary Clinton can be the first meme president.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:33 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just donated $5 for that tweet. Let's do this.
posted by Talez at 11:33 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Despite all the terribly dank memes I saw on Facebook, I really doubt that Bernie listens to "Unknown Pleasures" on vinyl.
posted by malocchio at 11:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Really excited for weird Hillary Clinton twitter.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:35 AM on June 9, 2016 [24 favorites]


Is it just me or does Bernie seem caught off guard by the President's endorsement?
posted by joedan at 11:35 AM on June 9, 2016


Announcing Donald Trump's new running mate.
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 AM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Is it just me or does Bernie seem caught off guard by the President's endorsement?

See I really just feel like this is his "dammit guys I've said I'm not conceding til everyone votes so just back off a bit. I don't want to have to say anything bad about Hillary anymore so I guess I just have to grin nervously" face.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:37 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah. We dearly need 4 more years of VP Joe Biden. He really is the best.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:37 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


MJ Lee at CNN: “Sanders vows to work with Clinton as Dems move toward party unity”

Let us think on this moment and remember all of our panicked reactions to hot takes.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


I think we all need to step out of the current moment for a sec and just think about this. A candidate for the position of President of the United States of America just told the other candidate for the position of President of the United States of America to "delete your account." That is a thing that happened. That tweet may very well be printed in books (or rather 'printed' in 'books' I suppose) on the history of presidential campaigns and on the history of the internet a hundred years from now. The future is more bizarre than our finest cyberpunk authors ever dreamed.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:38 AM on June 9, 2016 [60 favorites]


On paper, the gull is supremely qualified for the ticket. More than the person at the top probably. But I don't think gulls live long enough to be constitutionally eligible. I'm gonna have to see a birth certificate.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:39 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




Parrots live long enough. They can live to be 50+ years old.
posted by stolyarova at 11:41 AM on June 9, 2016


Clinton is giving Trump the best possible Twitter advice she could give him. He will not follow it. He definitely will not follow it now.
posted by clawsoon at 11:42 AM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


Orange seagull's a strong choice, representing both the left wing and the right wing. It's going to bring a caw to action to voters everywhere, especially in the fly-over states, even if it suffers a few flaps in the media. #BeakOrBust
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [22 favorites]


I really adore Elizabeth Warren in righteous rage mode. I agree that she shouldn't be vice president, but I would definitely nominate her for anger translator for the duration of the campaign.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:43 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]



Elizabeth Warren Should Not Be Vice President, So let's all step back and just appreciate her sick Trump burns.


Ha, Secretary of Shade.
posted by zutalors! at 11:44 AM on June 9, 2016 [53 favorites]


However, it looks like the objection in California specifically is that they also ban open-carry,

The history behind that ban is incredible and shows the gun rights movement for what it is. (spoiler: The governor who signed that ban? Ronald Wilson Reagan.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:44 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


He will not follow it. He definitely will not follow it now.

You know how usually the reverse psychology trick stops working on people after they hit the age of about 7?

hehehehehehe
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


The only thing that would have been even more awesome is if she had tweeted this instead.
posted by Justinian at 11:47 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


The history behind that ban is incredible and shows the gun rights movement for what it is.

I didn't know about this,
but of fucking course.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:48 AM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


The only thing that would have been even more awesome is if she had tweeted this instead.

I don't know, I feel like Delete Your Account was perfect. Like how do you even respond?
posted by zutalors! at 11:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


When the NRA opposed open carry. Save you a click: When black people did it.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:50 AM on June 9, 2016 [20 favorites]


I'm gonna need a Delete Your Account T-shirt though.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


I don't know, I feel like Delete Your Account was perfect. Like how do you even respond?

I don't know, and I can't wait to find out.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:53 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Elizabeth Warren, Secretary of the Treasury.
posted by mikelieman at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




That "Delete your account." tweet is so on point. Clinton's speeches lately have been fantastic. I cannot wait to watch her debate Trump.
posted by defenestration at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


That "Delete your account." tweet is so on point. Clinton's speeches lately have been fantastic. I cannot wait to watch her debate Trump.

Especially when her anger translator comes out.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm calling it now. It will be "cool" to like Hillary in about four months in the same hipstery way it's cool to like Michael McDonald and Steely Dan.

What A Fool Believes, in other words ?
posted by y2karl at 12:01 PM on June 9, 2016


That “Delete your account.” tweet is so on point.

Today, I have learned that I am old.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Today, I have learned that I am old.

I saw that tweet and LITERALLY gasped. Clapped my hand against my mouth reflexively and everything.
posted by rorgy at 12:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


After Mitch McConnell's statement, "With regard to Donald Trump’s utterances over the past week, I disagree with all of them", I'm halfway surprised "Delete your account" didn't come from him or some other highly ranked Republican. Because I'm pretty sure that his statement also applies to the TrumpTweet that prompted Clinton's response.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Would Barack Obama consider being Ms. Clinton's anger translator? Or
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


clawsoon: "Clinton is giving Trump the best possible Twitter advice she could give him. He will not follow it. He definitely will not follow it now."

You think that one of his advisers would have taken away his password by now. If there's anything that makes me believe the stories about the chaos in the Trump campaign, it's the fact that they still allow him to tweet out any garbage that comes into his head.
posted by octothorpe at 12:06 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


When the NRA opposed open carry. Save you a click: When black people did it.

To save you even another click: The Black Panthers followed cops around, armed, to make sure they weren't up to shenanigans when in black neighborhoods.
posted by sideshow at 12:07 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]




Trump's buttons are deliciously easy to push. This is going to be fun.
posted by stolyarova at 12:10 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Is it just me or does Bernie seem caught off guard by the President's endorsement?

Aw man that video made me sad and I'm not a Sanders voter. He even did the "scratch my cheek and try not to cry" thing I've done on bad days at work.

Why do people have to lose
posted by sallybrown at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [18 favorites]


I don't understand "Delete Your Account." I am an old.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


My bet is Trump's going to respond before one of his staffers can explain the meme to him.
posted by klarck at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Has Congressman Vela's takedown of Trump shown up here yet?
Before you dismiss me as just another “Mexican,” let me point out that my great-great grandfather came to this country in 1857, well before your own grandfather. His grandchildren (my grandfather and his brothers) all served our country in World War I and World War II. His great-grandson, my father, served in the U.S. Army and, coincidentally, was one of the first “Mexican” federal judges ever appointed to the federal bench.
posted by clawsoon at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]




Trigger words a go-go: David Duke defends Trump, blames Jews for judge criticism
posted by kirkaracha at 12:13 PM on June 9, 2016


The Trump campaign is not in disarray... this is the way he has always "managed" everything - dictatorially, impulsively and stupidly.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:14 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


When the NRA opposed open carry. Save you a click: When black people did it.

To save you even another click: The Black Panthers followed cops around, armed, to make sure they weren't up to shenanigans when in black neighborhoods.

That first saved click made me angry. The second made me glad the law was passed. Synopses are strange things.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:16 PM on June 9, 2016


I lost some respect for Jill Stein when she tweeted this the other night:
The Democratic Party is a disgrace to our democracy... blatantly rigging the system against @BernieSanders from the start #SMH #ByeFelicia👋🏽
posted by glhaynes at 12:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Here's some history for "delete your account" for anybody else who is confused but amused. I googled it For Us All.

As best as I can tell, it's a Twitter meme - a sharp, dismissive response to tweets that are particularly out-of-touch or egregiously offensive.
posted by stolyarova at 12:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Duke called Megyn Kelly a shabbos goy in that article. Daaaaaaamn.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


America to Jill Stein: Shush, the adults are talking.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


Anyone else remember that season of Survivor, when Russell Hantz first played? He scorched through the competition, made a total mockery of everyone else, was a loud detestable human being who played everyone perfectly and crushed all of them on his way to the final. And then when it came time for the final vote, when it was out of his hands and there was nothing left he could do to influence things, he lost.

That is how I see Donald Trump's campaign. He's been able to run roughshod over everyone because the ones on his own team still thought they could use his presence for their own agenda, to help push them to the end. But now he's up against his last opponent, and she won't pull any punch that needs to be thrown.

And yes, I am aware of the irony that I'm using a reality TV show to make a point about a reality TV candidate, so you don't have to point that out to me.

(And that just made me wonder if perhaps Trump had a production team following him around all these months, secretly filming a new reality show? Would it really surprise anyone?)

posted by GhostintheMachine at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


While the Black Panthers have a mixed history, the widespread police terrorism of the black community they were responding to was (still is, in a lot of places) a very real thing.
posted by tavella at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


I don't understand "Delete Your Account." I am an old.

Hmm... I'd say it's about equivalent to responding to someone else's angry screed that they spent an hour typing out with a single, lowercase 'lol.' It's so dismissive a response that it doesn't even bother to engage with the substance of what was said, implying that there would be no point in doing so, and it's also calculated to really piss somebody off if their purpose for posting is to rile other people up, because you are showing that you are not riled, but amused at their idiocy. But 'delet your account' goes even farther than 'lol' by implying that anything and everything that the target has said in the past and will say in the future is of equally low worth.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [25 favorites]


Russell Hantz is a much better strategist than Donald Trump. Let's be real here.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:21 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I hate this goddamn horrible election. I used to think maybe all the gross bigotry in our country would be easier to eradicate if people were more open about it, but this just feels like a growing list of Americans whose safety and peace of mind are being threatened.

I just hope Oprah's interviews of Elie Wiesel and decades of History Channel Holocaust programming somehow inoculated most young adults against falling for this UTTER CRAP.
posted by sallybrown at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Delete Your Account is like when there's a heated group thread for a bachelorette party or somesuch and people are freaking out about the party bus and the favors and we're all going to wear pink right this is LILA'S BIG NIGHT GUYS and one chick just responds "unsubscribe"
posted by zutalors! at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016 [23 favorites]


Rob/Amber 2020
posted by rorgy at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Or could Jill Stein's Twitter account have been hacked and taken over by Trumpy?
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2016


Jill Stein took one too many St. John's Wort capsules or something.
posted by sallybrown at 12:25 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]




I feel like a lot of the History Channel plays into a sort of the Nazis were very very bad but they were also SO FUCKEN METAL, DUDE dynamic so maybe don't turn any hopeful eyes in their direction when it comes to dictator inoculations
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:25 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


That doesn't make sense. Homeopathy tells us that the effect gets weaker as you increase the dose!
posted by Justinian at 12:25 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


like I'm pretty sure that last one I watched wasn't titled HITLER'S SICKEST ARTILLERY FORTRESS FUCK YEAH but it might as well have been
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Goddamn I guess that means I need more lavender spray, my brain must not be working so well!
posted by sallybrown at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2016


too many St. John's Wort capsules

Or maybe she accidentally took only fraction of one and we all know the smaller the dose the more incredibly potent and dangerous it is? /s
posted by stolyarova at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2016


I voted for Jill Stein in 2012.

Not this time. Sorry Greens. I love like 90% of what you stand for and say but the other 10% is batshit bonkers, and that percentage has been growing in recent years.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Aw man Justinian beat me. GG. JUSTINIAN 2016 MAKE BYZANTIUM GREAT AGAIN
posted by stolyarova at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rob/Amber 2020

Are we talking Survivor-era Rob/Amber or Amazing Race Rob/Amber? Because the deliciousness of watching the brilliant connivance in one format utterly fail in another one would be a great relief in this election season.
posted by psoas at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I could like 243% of what the Greens stand for and they'd still never get my vote until they showed they're serious about building a party from the ground up in local and state races every election year instead of rolling vanity candidates out there every four years. Bernie understood this, which is why he was successful. The notion that he would have anything to gain by joining the Greens is ludicrous.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2016 [24 favorites]


NYTimes: Is Everything Wrestling?
So when I think of how politics and pop culture are often compared to wrestling, this is the element that seems most transferable: not the outlandish characters or the jumbo-size threats, but the insistence on telling a great story with no regard for the facts. Donald Trump can claim there were thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering when the World Trade Center came down. Bill Clinton can lend weight to the myth of pedantic Bernie Bros overwhelming our national political discourse. Michael Jordan can say he was cut from his varsity basketball team, but was driven enough to overcome the slight. Kim Kardashian can say she married Kris Humphries for love, not ratings. Chance the Rapper can brand himself as an independent, unsigned artist, even though his last two mixtapes were released exclusively through Apple, the 12th-largest corporation in the world. And the WWE can honor the recently deceased wrestling star Chyna as a trailblazer, even though it blacklisted her for an entire decade. Each of these doctored realities is close enough, a problem only for pedants.

You can be dismayed with all of this for reasons that go deeper than taste.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


I mentioned this in the last thread, but back in 2012, when I was a shade more naive, Jill Stein released a video that a lot of friends freaked out about in which, this sketchy-looking dude is watching TV, and Jill Stein says "bullshit" on that TV, and looks at the camera and sorta-smirks, and then she goes, "I'm sorry I said bullshit on live TV, but that's just how strongly I feel about the politics these days, and you're just gonna have to deal with it," and the sketchy-looking dude just about spits out his Hot Pocket

but they censored "bullshit" so the whole thing was a fucking waste of time

anyway a bunch of my friends were like "FINALLY A POLITICIAN WHO CALLS IT LIKE IT IS" and it made me question if they knew what an actual politician was
posted by rorgy at 12:30 PM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


Sanders joining the Green Party would be such a nadir for his campaign, it would make me want to ralph
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:30 PM on June 9, 2016 [27 favorites]


Are we talking Survivor-era Rob/Amber or Amazing Race Rob/Amber?

I WAS TRYING TO REACH ACROSS THE AISLE DAMMIT
posted by rorgy at 12:31 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


The guns rights people were certainly voting for Trump anyways, but now they get a more tangible reminder.

They weren't and aren't, yet. We've been fighting a controlled burn, pointing out that Trump is from NYC which has very strict gun control laws, and thus can't be trusted on guns the way people think he can, to limited success. There's been pushback on the NRA endorsement. This is very poorly timed news for the "don't worry about the Supreme Court" line some folks have tried to push, sadly. My own (white raised) husband is now "well I mean he's bad but would you rather have Hillary" and I am just dodging the question a lot.

I really wish this election could take time off from the stuff people are divided on and focus on the stuff we mostly agree on, but that would be asking too much.
posted by corb at 12:31 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


Steve Reilly: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens – filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work – since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:32 PM on June 9, 2016 [20 favorites]


NYTimes: Is Everything Wrestling?

I think that there is an argument to be made that Kayfabe is the default mode of American culture presently.
posted by goHermGO at 12:34 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


The things that individual citizens agree on have little to nothing to do with what politicians agree on. On guns in particular, we tried focusing on the things we agree on like background checks and closing private sale loopholes, and we saw how that worked out.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:34 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Steve Reilly: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills

Deadbeat Donald! Hillary finally has her catchy Trumpian moniker for Trump!
posted by tonycpsu at 12:35 PM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


I mean more like "sweet Jesus can we avoid touching the third rail of committed Republican voters in a year I need to tell people it's okay not to vote for the R at the top of the ticket."
posted by corb at 12:37 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Uh, fine, but I don't think appeals courts should alter the content or timing of their opinions for political reasons. Do you?
posted by tonycpsu at 12:39 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I definitely feel your pain on this one, corb, but at the same time the judiciary is politicized enough without leaning on judges to tailor their rulings to an election year.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Parrots live long enough. They can live to be 50+ years old.

Ooh, if we start campaigning now, we can totally elect Griffin Pepperberg in 2032.
posted by jackbishop at 12:41 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


In a world that's so rampant with online harassment and silencing of women, how good does it feel to see a powerful woman dismiss the ultimate troll with "Delete your account."? SO. FUCKING. GOOD.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:41 PM on June 9, 2016 [32 favorites]


corb, if your husband hasn't read Why ‘Hillary Is Even Worse’ Doesn’t Cut It, he might enjoy it (or you might). Deprogram him enough to vote for Gary Johnson if you can't get him to vote for Clinton. At the very least, he can increase the chance of a broader spectrum of voices next time around.
posted by stolyarova at 12:42 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Calling it now, Trump is facing a bankruptcy in the not so distant future and this vanity bid of his was mainly focused on getting his brand up in terms of value and he really never expected to do so well in the nomination process.

But he's looking at trying to basically run his GE campaign on the cheap with virtually no advertising, analytics, grassroots, etc. It will be endless Fox and Friends cheerleading and tweets and some big Nazi themed rallies.

He will basically avoid putting any money down on the GE if he can avoid it, mainly because he probably doesn't have much he can actually spend since he's leveraged to the hilt.
posted by vuron at 12:42 PM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


Fair point, HZSF.

If anybody wants to rage with me, You Were Born In A Taco Bell is a horrific fucking look at how racism in young children is increasing with Trump's candidacy. I just want to cry for an hour.
posted by corb at 12:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [18 favorites]


I've been getting this feel from Trump from the get go. He's always looking for the quick buck. He's never looking big picture but quick cash out. That's not how a billionaire handles cash, he's over leveraged and can not afford to lose even the Trump University case, because that may open his finances to scrutiny. the $500K real estate tax break he gets is spot on. It is his shame and what has been driving the bullshit machine ever forward. He can't afford to stop.
posted by readery at 12:50 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


wow corb, and that's at a Berkeley CA school named after Rosa Parks.
posted by zutalors! at 12:52 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


He will basically avoid putting any money down on the GE if he can avoid it, mainly because he probably doesn't have much he can actually spend since he's leveraged to the hilt.


My view of Trump's finances have always been influenced by this thing Ivanka said in a 2003 documentary titled Born Rich. I doubt much has changed since.

“I remember once, my father and I were walking down 5th Avenue, and there was a homeless person sitting right outside of Trump Tower. And I think I was probably nine, ten something like this, it was right around the time as the divorce. And I remember my father pointing to him and saying ‘That guy has $8 billion more than me.’ Because he was in such extreme debt at that point. And me thinking ‘What are you talking about?’ He was sitting outside of Trump Tower, and I didn’t understand. I just thought about it a year or two ago and thought it interesting. It makes me all the more proud of my parents that they got through that.”
posted by pocketfullofrye at 12:53 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think we all need to step out of the current moment for a sec and just think about this. A candidate for the position of President of the United States of America just told the other candidate for the position of President of the United States of America to "delete your account." That is a thing that happened. That tweet may very well be printed in books (or rather 'printed' in 'books' I suppose) on the history of presidential campaigns and on the history of the internet a hundred years from now. The future is more bizarre than our finest cyberpunk authors ever dreamed.

I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I don't understand the magical world people see when they look at this stuff.
posted by bongo_x at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Deadbeat Donald" -- oh sweet jesus please yes somebody needs to drop that hammer. Elizabeth Warren, I'm looking at you.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:55 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




Elizabeth Warren, I'm looking at you.

She is Clinton's Secretary of Shade, after all. (h/t Pierce for that one.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:57 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


That tweet may very well be printed in books (or rather 'printed' in 'books' I suppose) on the history of presidential campaigns and on the history of the internet a hundred years from now.

Good point. I just responded to it with a greeting to future historians. Now I will be remembered forever.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:58 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


How ‘Students For Trump’ Terrorized Portland State University
Led by self-proclaimed “moderate fascist,” Volodymyr Kolychev
One man from Infowars uniformed in black stood with his arm extended in a fascist salute in the middle of downtown Portland’s Pioneer Square, while others told white protesters to admit that they were proud of their race. Infowars staff members were there to provoke counter-protesters, putting cameras in their faces in an attempt to inspire reactions.
Ayme Ueda, an organizer with the Portland Solidarity Network who was attending the counter-demonstration, told ThinkProgress that in an attempt to drown out the noise being made by protesters, one of the leaders of the Trump coalition yelled, “Does anyone have any bullets so we can make America great again on these steps?”
The fuck? If I was a Hollywood exec I'd throw out this script based on it being nothing but third rate writing relying on tropes and stereotypes.

But here we are.
posted by Talez at 12:59 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


P.J. O'Rourke Endorses Hillary Clinton - "She's wrong about absolutely everything. But she's wrong within normal parameters!"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:02 PM on June 9, 2016 [38 favorites]


Steve Reilly: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills

How big a surprise is this? One of DJT's very few specific plans were he to be elected is weaseling out of the national debt.
posted by aught at 1:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


So despite his scheming and unsettling marital habits, we can now be sure that Donald J. Trump is definitely not a Lannister.
posted by stolyarova at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


James Kirchick: Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss.
Having endured for a quarter century the slings and arrows of what she once memorably termed “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” Clinton seems a strange champion of the conservative cause. But this is a strange campaign. That Clinton is the conservative option owes less to her beliefs (which are mostly progressive) than it does to the fact that the presumptive nominee of the ostensibly conservative party has no interest in conserving anything at all.
-
While we know how Clinton would govern as president, no one, not even his supporters, can tell us how Trump might behave once in office. And even when it comes to quotidian policy matters, Clinton has better conservative credentials. Trump proposes—among other radical changes—undoing the global security architecture that has ensured unprecedented peace and prosperity since World War II, engaging in trade wars with various countries, and vowing to act beyond the constitutional bounds of the presidency—bounds that are set by precedent and traditionally accepted by the officeholder in tacit respect for the limits of the office.

Needless to say, respect for “precedent” and “limits,” two crucial elements of the conservative temperament, are not characteristics that Donald Trump possesses.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:07 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


President Obama's Eulogy for Cassandra Butts (text only)
posted by halifix at 1:08 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


So despite his scheming and unsettling marital habits, we can now be sure that Donald J. Trump is definitely not a Lannister.

No, although there is evidence that he thinks he is running for Grand Nagus.
posted by meinvt at 1:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [20 favorites]


I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I don't understand the magical world people see when they look at this stuff.

Hey, I didn't say it was magical. I said it was bizarre.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, if his ears are anything like his hands ...
posted by rewil at 1:17 PM on June 9, 2016


The Rules of Acquisition are beyond perfect for Trump.
Once you have their money, you never give it back.

Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

War is good for business.

Peace is good for business.

Never be afraid to mislabel a product.

She can touch your lobes, but never your latinum.

posted by stolyarova at 1:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


My view of Trump's finances have always been influenced by this thing Ivanka said

Funny, to me that doesn't say anything about Trump's finances, but it says everything about the "Lucky Ducky" attitude of the wealthy towards the poor.

Though I'm also not surprised that Drumpf is one of those types, or that he'd try to poison his children with that sort of rhetoric rather than, "Let's donate to Housing Works as soon as we get home."
posted by Sara C. at 1:24 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


NYTimes: Is Everything Wrestling?

Sadly, no, because the Iron Sheik is not constitutionally eligible to run for President, and thus we are denied the greatest State of the Union addresses theoretically possible.

TED CRUZ IS RAISIN BALLS JABRONI. I SUPLEX THE DONALD TRUMP TILL DEAD ANIMAL FALLS OFF HEAD. FUCK THE HULK HOGAN
posted by delfin at 1:29 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


No, although there is evidence that he thinks he is running for Grand Nagus.

Wallace Shawn playing Trump in the inevitable biopic would be the ultimate troll.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:35 PM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


I want to see the inevitable My Dinner with Donald parody.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd say the voters are the ones standing between America and the abyss.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]




what a time to be alive
posted by poffin boffin at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2016 [27 favorites]


r317, you are leading the choo choo on the sick burn twitter train today.
posted by zutalors! at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Too late for some of us.

I would not have thought Weiner's sense of humor was that advanced, tbh.
posted by dersins at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


What is interesting is that Obama will be the first incumbent President to campaign on behalf of his successor since forever.

Eisenhower - despised Nixon
JFK - assassinated
Johnson - messy war
Nixon - resigned in disgrace
Reagan - arms for hostages, Iran-Contras, senility
Clinton - blowjob
Bush - Iraq War, Katrina

Unlike those before him, Obama is not shoved in the background by his own party in embarrassment and seems genuinely excited to get on the campaign trail for Clinton. I guess it just shows that Obama has run the most scandal free administration in a long time.
posted by JackFlash at 1:50 PM on June 9, 2016 [69 favorites]


Bill Clinton never campaigned for Al Gore? Ever?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:51 PM on June 9, 2016


Lin-Manuel Miranda wants you to register to vote.
posted by corb at 1:52 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


boy that's quite a one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other innit
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:53 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Maybe substitute “impeached” for “blowjob”.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:56 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


let's compromise: "impeached for blowjob"
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:56 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


NYTimes: Is Everything Wrestling?

I really want Hillary Clinton to start walking into debates & such to the sound of John Cena's entrance music.

They're both freakishly hard workers of great talent. They both suffer from the constant, undeserved hatred of people who think hating makes them cool. And it's damn good entrance music.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 1:56 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


I really want Hillary Clinton to start walking into debates & such to the sound of John Cena's entrance music.

NO i want the jaeger suiting up music from pacific rim
posted by poffin boffin at 1:58 PM on June 9, 2016 [14 favorites]


just so long as she doesn't have to wear those dumb jorts
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:58 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Lin-Manuel Miranda wants you to register to vote.

Fight less
Tweet more
But let them know what you're against and what you're for
Shake hands with Bern
Charmed, sir
It's 2016 ladies tell your partners you're with her.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


let's compromise: "impeached for blowjob"

♫Woah-oah! We’re half-way there! Woah-oah! We’re impeaching on a blow-job!♫

My brain is strange
posted by Going To Maine at 2:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


NO i want the jaeger suiting up music from pacific rim

And she should rise from underneath the podium with that fist-punching-the-palm move.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Cena and Clinton are also both surprisingly good at good-naturedly poking fun at themselves. (viz. Clinton's 404 page and Cena's performance [nsfw?] in Trainwreck.)
posted by dersins at 2:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I highly recommend the Anthony Weiner doc. It is the comedy of the summer, I swear. Dude is frustrating and always good with a quick comeback.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 2:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess it's hard for me not to see this through the lens of "man turns to other man in room even though the woman in the room is the one he needs to talk to."

For what it's worth, this kind of conspiracy theory is what i was talking about. This is horribly uncharitable and pushes what's becoming a really tiresome narrative.

Obama is the sitting president who won the election twice. Maybe he was just asking him for advice as to what he should do here?

It doesn't seem all that weird to ask the person leaving the job you're applying for what advice they wish they had heard in your position, rather than meeting with someone else also applying for the job. You don't need some overarching theory that supports a narrative of sexism to get there.

And i'm, 99% of the time, one to look at something and either go "yea, that's probably pretty sexist" or hear it and immediately see it. But holy crap has this one gone in to a flat spin of the only motivations for most of the things him or his supporters are doing being Totally Sexist.

And to be clear, i'm on team "yea he should probably concede at this point".
posted by emptythought at 2:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]


> Trump's buttons are deliciously easy to push. This is going to be fun.

Trump's supporters' buttons are also easy to push. This is going to be tragic. Like, seriously, reading about that horrible shit going down at PSU...people are going to get killed.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:04 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Bill Clinton never campaigned for Al Gore? Ever?

Wasn't it Gore who deliberately distanced himself from Clinton, assuming that Clinton was tarnished by the impeachment and generally hated by the American people, and worrying that being Clinton's VP was a liability?

Assuming being the operative word, of course.
posted by Sara C. at 2:09 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


The list was presidents who campaigned for their successors, so Democrats succeeded by Republicans (and vice versa) need not apply.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:13 PM on June 9, 2016


Wasn't it Gore who signed on the first Democrat to denounce Bill from the Senate floor as his running mate?
posted by delfin at 2:13 PM on June 9, 2016


It doesn't seem all that weird to ask the person leaving the job you're applying for what advice they wish they had heard in your position

This is the tiresome rhetoric that needs to stop.

Bernie Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. He has lost the vote. It's all over but the shouting.

It's patently clear that the meeting between Sanders and Obama was probably to talk about concession scenarios and/or party unity, no matter who actually called it. If Sanders formally "called" the meeting, it was almost certainly not a unilateral request, nor was it likely set to talk about something like how Bernie should handle his campaign during the general election. (I mean, aside from "PLEASE SUSPEND IT.")
posted by Sara C. at 2:14 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


I would not have thought Weiner's sense of humor was that advanced, tbh.

Weiner's Twitter is really fucking funny. This is his pinned tweet, for instance.
posted by rorgy at 2:16 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


For what it's worth, this kind of conspiracy theory is what i was talking about. This is horribly uncharitable and pushes what's becoming a really tiresome narrative.

I don't see it as a conspiracy theory at all, and what is really tiresome to me are comments that this kind of thought process is uncharitable when it's hard for many of us not to be suspicious, since this election, and this society, are a gauntlet of sexism on a good day.
posted by agregoli at 2:17 PM on June 9, 2016 [20 favorites]


Calling it now, Trump is facing a bankruptcy in the not so distant future and this vanity bid of his was mainly focused on getting his brand up in terms of value and he really never expected to do so well in the nomination process.

An Open Letter to Trump Voters from His Top Strategist-Turned-Defector: "Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it."
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 2:22 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]




I think it is perfectly fair to wonder if the losing candidate with no path would meet first with POTUS, not his winning rival, if said rival were male. That's the basic sexism inquiry. And I don't think this instance passes that test. Traditionally those who lose in politics call their opponents, not the incumbent they want to replace.
posted by bearwife at 2:23 PM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]


Same as the Sanders-Trump debate thing: the second-place candidate would not seek out a debate with the opposite party, bypassing the first-place candidate, if they were all men. It would not be tolerated. Basic sexism inquiry.
posted by Dashy at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


like I'm pretty sure that last one I watched wasn't titled HITLER'S SICKEST ARTILLERY FORTRESS FUCK YEAH but it might as well have been

That was an episode of Nova, actually.
posted by The Tensor at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2016


I'm actually working for a production company that makes that sort of thing (the History channel variety, not NOVA, unfortunately) and am DYING to talk about how the sausage is made but also I'm literally in my office right now, it would be super inappropriate. Even though I like my job and what we do here and think it's cool that we get to make History channel stuff. (We make the better end of History channel stuff.)
posted by Sara C. at 2:42 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


I don't think this ex-Trump strategist is a particularly reliable source. She seems to be a bit nuts. The whole running to be second strategy seems like just as impossible a strategy as actually winning the whole thing,
posted by humanfont at 2:49 PM on June 9, 2016


This is the tiresome rhetoric that needs to stop.

Bernie Sanders is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. He has lost the vote. It's all over but the shouting.


Yea... and i acknowledged that. More what i was saying is if you didn't believe that, what he's doing would make sense. That person is still your competitor, not the person you're trying to figure out how to graciously concede to.

I already said i think he should concede at this point, which hurts, but from someone in the position of not wanting to this isn't that weird of a move. And he's publicly stated he didn't want to. It only comes off as weird if he was.

And you know, i'm probably painting myself in to a crappy corner here and i'll seriously stop after this and give it a rest but

I'm just a stupid shill. But some rando non-feminist dude suddenly notices that Hillary Clinton is not, in fact, history's greatest monster, and he's instantly credible. He says the same shit I've been saying, and suddenly he's the belle of the fucking ball.

So the situation changes, and he is obviously the loser. People change their mind and decide the "backup option" for them isn't that bad, maybe even if they were determined to not pick it even as a last resort before.

Now, because they didn't change their mind until it literally was a toss up as to whether he'd lose until a few days ago, they're sexist buttheads for not doing so until now?


Both of the situations described here are very much real things, that occur all the time. I am in no way saying they're not. I just think they're being applied to this election and situation in an extremely unfortunate way. If you're argument only makes sense with a bunch of the context rug pulled out, it's probably not a great one.

And seriously, i've seen so much sexist garbage brosplained away that i rewrote this comment several times going "do i sound like one those assy internet dudes?". But seriously, that is a flat out unfair take.
posted by emptythought at 2:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Didn't you guys know that Bernie is already an honorary woman?
posted by history_denier at 2:52 PM on June 9, 2016


I don't think it was uncharitable at all to question that move by Sanders. I was asking, while admitting my own bias!) - is there a reason Sanders would ask to meet with Obama at this stage?

For example - is this something the losing candidate for nomination typically does? Is there something Sanders has to ask Obama for because Clinton is unable to give him? Is there some kind of reason one candidate couldn't talk to another?

The only possibility I could think of, which I thought was too uncharitable, so I didn't post about it, is that Sanders requested a follow up meeting to beg Obama in person not to endorse today. But that seems unlikely to me.

It seems far more likely to me that Sanders, living for so many years (as we ALL do) in a deeply sexist society, wanted to talk to Obama (the "big boss") rather than swallow his pride and talk to Clinton, and he thought that was acceptable in part because sexism makes that kind of evasion/erasure possible.

I am certainly not saying Sanders is some especially sexist person or any more sexist than any of the many men who have performed this move in board rooms or school rooms or car dealerships or bank loan offices or whatever that I have been in. It's just on a bigger stage. But I understand many people don't see it that way (consider the different views on the proposed Trump debate).

And just like no one has invalidated your feelings by going "what the heck are you talking about with bad dynamics in this thread, show me what comments are unfair" or the like, please don't invalidate my feelings and experiences that inform my read of the situation.
posted by sallybrown at 2:58 PM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


We're getting back into the endless arguments stage of the thread. And we were doing so good today.
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Missed initial Delete tweet, and came in 3 hrs. later to 10K Trumpers responding "Emails."

[I fear they say that so often it'll soon be the only word they remember.
Person: What do you want to eat?
Trumper: Emails.
What'd you name your dog?
Emails.
What was your grandson's first word?...]
posted by NorthernLite at 3:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bill Clinton never campaigned for Al Gore?

He did, but Gore's strategy was to distance himself from the Clinton scandal and sideline him for most of the campaign. Clinton and Gore deliberately never appeared on the same stage together. Clinton offered to campaign in Florida a couple days before the election but Gore refused him, which some argue may have cost him the election. Gore picked that sanctimonious jerk Lieberman as his running mate as a Clinton antidote.

This was all a strategic mistake on Gore's part because although the the Pecksniffian press despised Clinton he was adored by Democratic voters and had the highest approval ratings of a departing President since Eisenhower.
posted by JackFlash at 3:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


And just like no one has invalidated your feelings by going "what the heck are you talking about with bad dynamics in this thread, show me what comments are unfair" or the like, please don't invalidate my feelings and experiences that inform my read of the situation.

That is a completely fair take, and something that i'm going to sit down and consider for a while.
posted by emptythought at 3:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Both of the situations described here are very much real things, that occur all the time. I am in no way saying they're not. I just think they're being applied to this election and situation in an extremely unfortunate way. If you're argument only makes sense with a bunch of the context rug pulled out, it's probably not a great one.

And seriously, i've seen so much sexist garbage brosplained away that i rewrote this comment several times going "do i sound like one those assy internet dudes?". But seriously, that is a flat out unfair take.
Dude, you know I'm a big fan of yours (did you know that? if not: seriously, huge fan), and I even see your perspective here (though I don't share it). But, right now, you're the guy that's writing lots of paragraphs articulating why you don't think something that reads to a lot of people as sexist is actually sexist, and that is maybe not the place to be during a campaign where the dude who just met a dude has a bunch of fans who like to call his rival nasty sexist things.
posted by rorgy at 3:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


And Sanders is sexist. Not his campaign (though they're sexist too), not his followers (yup ditto), but Sanders himself. He is the sort of sexist who wants women and men to have equal rights, but he follows a lot of sexist patterns of thinking, makes arguments that are unfairly dismissive of women, and acts in frequently-disrespectful ways. None of this invalidates him or the things he cares about or makes him somebody who wouldn't be good for women in many ways as president, but none of that makes his being sexist any less true.
posted by rorgy at 3:05 PM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


I had the thought, *We're witnessing the death of the GOP" and had one of those spine tingles like, history is happening, hurrah.

And then I thought, but (and I say this as a white person) what are the racists and xenophobes going to do? Where can they go if the GOP isn't there feeding their racist ideology?

I mean it's not like the Democrats (nor should they) say "Welcome, you fucking racists!"
posted by angrycat at 3:05 PM on June 9, 2016


According to TPM, Trump is persona non grata at every major bank except for a single division in Deutsche Bank.
posted by PenDevil at 3:08 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


You know I'm kinda wondering if their positions were reversed and Sanders was the presumptive nominee whether the left would be asked to let Clinton determine Sanders running mate and have the ability to put up half of his cabinet.

Obama wasn't forced to put up with those demands from Clinton and the PUMAs in 2008 and Clinton was way way more competitive than Sanders in terms of the nomination.

Personally I believe that Sanders probably has a role in influencing the party moving forwards but putting too much faith in a bunch of Bernie or Bust activists (many of whom are hardly the most reliable voters) as a source of bargaining power is probably a misplay in terms of where Bernie is at in terms of influence.
posted by vuron at 3:09 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


According to TPM, Trump is persona non grata at every major bank except for a single division in Deutsche Bank.

This is the strongest proof to date that he has far less money than he says.
posted by sallybrown at 3:09 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


Trump is persona non grata at every major bank except for a single division in Deutsche Bank
Well, then, that means he'll surely break up the big banks purely out of spite. I've said before he won't do anything as President that doesn't benefit himself directly... and that's one thing we might WANT to see...
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:12 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Maybe all the racists and xenophobes in the Republican party should become sovereign citizens and vote for themselves.
posted by vuron at 3:16 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


the reason no one has ever broken the glass ceiling in American politics is because it's really fucking hard to break
The fact that the only woman to get anywhere near the Presidency is a Former First Lady is not so much her problem as it proves just how hostile America is to anybody other than White Males. (And remember, the first Black President has a White mother...)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:19 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


We're witnessing the death of the GOP.

We've heard this many times. For example after the resignations of the Republican vice-President and the Republican President for corruption within months of each other, they said the Republicans were dead forever. Except six years later we got Ronald Reagan.

And after the disastrous reign of George W. Bush, when they didn't even let him appear in person at the 2008 Republican convention, they said that was the end of Republicans. But Republicans took back the House two years later and the Senate fours after that.

The fact is that roughly half of the human population is of the conservative psyche so Republicans or their like will always be with us.
posted by JackFlash at 3:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sanders is a powerful white guy who has surrounded himself with and elevated mostly other white men. As a white man, I think that is the worst form of stealth racism and sexism. If you have privilege and power you have to fight the cultural and social inertia that stratify society. We can't end racism and sexism if we don't make an extra effort to bring women and minorities to the table, hire them and let them have a peice of the pie. Making speeches and talking about how you want to lift folks up is nothing if you don't practice it in your inner circle.
posted by humanfont at 3:20 PM on June 9, 2016 [32 favorites]


Well, then, that means he'll surely break up the big banks purely out of spite.

So instead of a few banks that won't deal with him, he'll have a bunch of banks that won't deal with him.
posted by nubs at 3:21 PM on June 9, 2016


I had the thought, *We're witnessing the death of the GOP" and had one of those spine tingles like, history is happening, hurrah.

FWIW I think the GOP will be fine. This is a crisis of party loyalty, sure, but they have been training for this kind of cognitive dissonance their whole lives, and writing LOYALTY in glitter pen with a heart-O on their denim jackets for decades. When the time comes, they'll vote their Republican identity like they always do. They'll pass Trump like a bladder stone. Once they've done it they will probably have more party unity than before because they stayed strong, they did the difficult thing.
posted by nom de poop at 3:24 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


Trump/Bladder Stone '16
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:27 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Once they've done it they will probably have more party unity than before because they stayed strong, they did the difficult thing.

One way to cement someone to your group is to force them to do something so horrible that they feel they will never be acceptable outside the group. It's terrible and awful and it works very well. Maybe this is kind of like that. Once Republicans murder the puppy vote for Trump they will be Republicans for life because their sense of self will have been sufficiently broken down by the action.
posted by Justinian at 3:30 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


After 400 years as the overwhelmingly dominant force in American life (government, business, the arts, everything), the White Males are not going to give that up easily, regardless of "our" (personally, I'm ASHAMED to belong to this demographic group) diminishing numbers. There's a large number of "us" (NOT ME, NOT ME!) who are going to make the transition as painful as possible... and by painful, yes, I mean violent; the current "OMG, Trump's fans are gonna turn violent" is just the beginning and the pandering of this con-man/fake-billionaire may have just started the painful part of the process a little earlier than it otherwise would.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:32 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


One way to cement someone to your group is to force them to do something so horrible that they feel they will never be acceptable outside the group.

2 Trump 4:7 - "I have fought the good orange fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
posted by sallybrown at 3:35 PM on June 9, 2016


According to TPM, Trump is persona non grata at every major bank except for a single division in Deutsche Bank.

This is the strongest proof to date that he has far less money than he says.


Top 10 Reasons To Doubt Trump Is Even A Billionaire
posted by homunculus at 3:41 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


A few months ago I read about Trump's bankruptcy proceedings in Atlantic city. He left town owing many small business owners tens of thousands of dollars. I kept imagining how it must burn to see this self-proclaimed billionaire strut around and tell everybody how rich he is while running for president. I can't help thinking that it is despicable to call yourself a billionaire while claiming that you can't afford to pay the florist the $60,000 that you owe her or the $20,000 that you owe to the green grocer who supplied your vegetables. I realize that TRUMP'S debts related to the casino were legally discharged but if he truly has billions than I can't understand how anyone thinks those debts are morally discharged. But then....I'm not a billionaire, obviously.

If I was Clinton I would be interviewing all of those people he stiffed and run that as an ad; the 1%er stiffing the little guy is a powerful story in this economic environment.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:42 PM on June 9, 2016 [28 favorites]


I had the thought, *We're witnessing the death of the GOP" and had one of those spine tingles like, history is happening, hurrah.

That's more likely a slipped disc. Go see your local chiropractor.

The Republican Party will control the House, will have a sufficient Senate presence to filibuster without shame or pretense if they do in fact lose outright control, and will control more than their share of governorships, state legislatures, local governments and school boards. The Vulgar Talking Yam is likely to lose in a rout, but his blend of arrogance, racial disdain, xenophobia, taxophobia and regulationphobia _sells_ across America. Do not kid yourself that it does not or that it is regionally or rurally contained.

Trump? He's not a Real Republican. He's not a Real Conservative. We'll filibuster everything Clinton wants and wait for 2018 to retake the Senate. Turn your AM radio volume up and wait for further instructions.
posted by delfin at 3:44 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


I would not have thought Weiner's sense of humor was that advanced, tbh.

I think if your last name is Weiner and you're caught up in two public, humiliating scandals about your dick pix, you either develop major depression or you develop the ability to make some sick self-burns.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:50 PM on June 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


(poor Huma tho)
posted by en forme de poire at 3:50 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]




About a month too late...
posted by zachlipton at 3:54 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sanders is holding a rally in DC. MSNBC just cut away from it to go to Elizabeth Warren, who's giving a speech on how the GOP is attacking the judiciary.
posted by homunculus at 4:19 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sanders livestream
posted by peeedro at 4:23 PM on June 9, 2016


* Randomly clicks on peeedro's livestream link *
"twenty-seven bucks"
* Closes livestream link *
posted by zachlipton at 4:32 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yeah, it's just the standard stump speech.
posted by peeedro at 4:36 PM on June 9, 2016


Damn, Warren is on fire.
posted by johnpowell at 4:37 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


That's my Senator!
and you can't have her
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:41 PM on June 9, 2016 [17 favorites]


Someone needs to link to a video of this as soon as it's available please, I'm still at work and can't watch anything.
posted by yasaman at 4:52 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


"P.J. O'Rourke Endorses Hillary Clinton - "She's wrong about absolutely everything. But she's wrong within normal parameters!""

Heh, this was almost exactly my thought process in choosing which Republican to vote for in the primary (my state has an open primary so I pulled a GOP ballot because a) a friend of ours was running in a local race on that side and b) there were no significant local Dem races and c) I wanted to do my part to stop the Trumpocalypse, sorry for failing) -- "Okay, he's wrong on literally everything, but he's wrong within what I understand to be the normal boundaries of American political discourse, so he won't completely burn the country to the ground! I can live with that!"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:18 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Biden's speech just quoted Hamilton. The man, not the musical. This is good stuff.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:25 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]




Mark your calendars, folks: June 9, 2016, is the first day my mom shared a right-wing meme about the 2016 elections.

For context, my mom could perhaps be called a Reagan Republican, or a second generation Southern Strategy Republican. She's not terribly political and often doesn't think things through, but through primary season she's never struck me as a Trump voter.

Now she's not posting pro-Trump stuff, but she is posting memes about how "Killary" wants to murder babies by making 36-week late term abortions legal.

(It should be noted that my mother is a nurse practitioner, a former lactation consultant, and has four children. She knows full well that nobody is trying to abort healthy 36-week babies.)
posted by Sara C. at 5:38 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


I have noted it in my ledger.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:41 PM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


Sorry, I mostly posted it here because I can't bitch about it on Facebook without causing drama.

Also, I'm curious about exactly how the Republican machine works, especially among women, who as a group HATE Trump. So... how do you get out the vote among conservative women? What does it look like on the ground, on Facebook (which is where their core demo hangs out, social media-wise)?

If the first example I've seen is a good predictor, it looks like they're going to go anti-Hillary rather than pro-Trump, and they're going to lean on red meat social issues and insane lies no thinking person could believe.
posted by Sara C. at 5:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


But yet, your mother does not believe this, and has reposted it. I don’t understand. Why? Why not some bad thing about Clinton that she does believe true?
posted by Going To Maine at 5:51 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


So... how do you get out the vote among conservative women?

You make people hate Clinton more. And they have a 25 year head start.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:51 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


If Bill Clinton was 'the first black president' and Obama was 'the first gay president' then I guess Hillary Clinton can be the first meme president.

Politico: "Clinton BlackBerry photo led to State official’s query about email account"

This is the election where memes have gotten too real and gone too far
posted by Apocryphon at 6:00 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I apologize for saying this, but maybe Facebook drama is in order.
posted by aramaic at 6:06 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


But yet, your mother does not believe this, and has reposted it. I don’t understand. Why?

Dude, you, me, and my therapist...

I'm not sure if this is a common thing among otherwise sane, non-crank right-wingers, or if it's purely something that she does. But I've seen it a lot since she's joined Facebook, which was at some point in the Obama administration (after the 2008 election, thank god). I wouldn't say that she doesn't believe these memes, because clearly she does in the moment. But on the other hand, I know that if, in a completely different context, I asked her if healthy/viable 36 week fetuses were ever aborted, she would tell me that of course this never happens. Because she's a fucking scientist with multiple advanced degrees, and she's capable of rational thought. She's spent 30+ years working in hospitals.

(Another example is that she frequently shares memes about how entitled Millennials are because of "everyone gets a trophy" culture, which is ridiculous because her kids are Millennials and she sent us to schools and put us in activities where everybody got a trophy. But clearly she doesn't actually think her offspring are a bunch of entitled twerps.)

My guess is that the far-right runs on this sort of doublethink. Conspiracy theories and platitudes and things that are slickly packaged and sound nice in the moment but fall apart if you really think about them. The idea isn't to find troglodyte true believers, the idea is to get people to accept them without engaging their very real and functional brains.
posted by Sara C. at 6:11 PM on June 9, 2016 [10 favorites]


Trump is persona non grata

with that orange hair of his, he looks more like persona au gratin
posted by pyramid termite at 6:26 PM on June 9, 2016 [38 favorites]


"Yes I do." -Sen Elizabeth Warren on if she thinks she has the ability to be VP.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:35 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh Sara C. I know this all too well and if you ever want to chat, feel free to hit me up.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:38 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


So, question:

How much Bailey's is Priebus putting in his Wheaties these days?
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm not watching the Warren interview. Of course she has the ability to be VP. Did it sound like she wants it though?
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:42 PM on June 9, 2016


It sounded to me like it is all but a certainty that she'll run with Clinton if asked.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:43 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Do not want. We need her in the Senate.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:45 PM on June 9, 2016 [21 favorites]


The question was "are you ready to be Commander in Chief" not "VP"
posted by zutalors! at 6:55 PM on June 9, 2016


with that orange hair of his, he looks more like persona au gratin

I want you to know that reading this was an important moment for me.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:32 PM on June 9, 2016 [16 favorites]


I hope she runs. Once Clinton/Warren wins, Vice President Warren will get the Camaro that's been sitting out in front of One Observatory for the past eight years running within a week. Diamond Joe will show up with a sixer and high hopes of driving Ole Blue off the lot, but will leave dejected when he sees the Caramo's new license plate reading 'CVTVNDR' .
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:36 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Besides, if she really did want to be on the ticket, she should have been like "Yes, I have the ability to be VP, but only if one million Americans each donate $25 on HillaryClinton.com within the next 24 hours."

Actually, she should have done that even if she didn't want to be on the ticket, because it seems like the media's paying way more attention to her with this "will she / won't she" business than they are likely to once Hillary chooses her running mate.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:36 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


So now the hardcore Bernie supporters on my feed are sharing this video claiming that Google is altering search suggestions to hide criminal charges against Clinton. Except that if you try literally any known criminal (O.J. Simpson, Ted Kaczynski, etc.) it never suggests "crimes" or "criminal charges" for anyone. Clinton isn't a special exception.

Bonus: The video is directly from /r/The_Donald, where it got over 3000 upvotes.
posted by stolyarova at 7:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


I literally just came here from trying to explain to someone on Facebook how search engines work.
That someone is a former TA of mine, which is sad.
posted by Superplin at 7:47 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Maybe we can get Insane Clown Posse to make a song about it.
posted by biogeo at 7:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


And I don't wanna talk to a statistician, those motherfuckers lyin' with their erudition
posted by stolyarova at 7:55 PM on June 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


To clarify, my explanation was a response to her posting that Google conspiracy video. I was still in a bit of shock when I commented earlier.

This woman is a journalist.
posted by Superplin at 7:57 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mother Jones:
Until the election, we're bringing you "The Trump Files," a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:08 PM on June 9, 2016 [11 favorites]


Someone needs to link to a video of this as soon as it's available please, I'm still at work and can't watch anything.

I believe this is it. And it's, well, damn. If she's not the VP she needs the opportunity to be put at the front of the surrogate pack every day explaining Donald Trump like this.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:15 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Apart from other reasons - wouldn't being the VP candidate actually lessen her ability to speak this freely?
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:19 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: Sorry, I mostly posted it here because I can't bitch about it on Facebook without causing drama.
posted by sallybrown at 8:25 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


Warren get the VP nod. Clinton wins the election. Jan 21, 2017 the FBI swoops in over the email thing and we get President Warren. At least that's what I'm trying to convince the Bernie or Bust folks.
posted by humanfont at 8:26 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh Sara C. I know this all too well and if you ever want to chat, feel free to hit me up

Me too! My dad, who I dearly love and who SHOULD KNOW BETTER is posting Trump memes that are just devoid of all facts. The latest is "Look at protesters roughing up Trump supporters!" I never know what to do with that stuff other than DAD WE ARE GOING TO BE IN CAMPS.

Warren get the VP nod. Clinton wins the election. Jan 21, 2017 the FBI swoops in over the email thing and we get President Warren. At least that's what I'm trying to convince the Bernie or Bust folks.

You magnificent bastard.
posted by corb at 8:28 PM on June 9, 2016 [23 favorites]


I can't find it now, but I swear I read a piece in USA Today over the weekend about how somehow the MA Governor could be forced to appoint a Dem to fill Warren's seat if she becomes VP.
posted by sallybrown at 8:28 PM on June 9, 2016


Andrew Dice Clay, Robin Leach, and Donald Trump in the same room. Man, the 80s were a hell of a drug.

Yes, I know it was in 1990. Regardless of what anyone else tells you, everything before Nevermind was still the 80s.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:36 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Damn, Warren excoriates Trump in that video. I feel like I need a cigarette, even though I quit smoking 15 years ago.
posted by Superplin at 8:38 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


It would be all kinds of banana pancakes awesome if the press kept using this "Today Trump said x, despite having said not-x the day before" formulation from now until November. (As I mentioned upthread, an NPR reporter did note the, ah, inconsistency of Trump using a Teleprompter after having decried them.)

If my tone comes off too harsh please consider this post "state of the media, positions differ" rather than anything directed at you.

But I really disagree. (a) No one cares if Trump is using a teleprompter and (b) fewer people than no one care about his prior positions on teleprompter use and most importantly (c) this is exactly how the press covers everyone. Sure, it's fun if you don't like Trump when it happens to him, but anyone who wants to vote for Trump can also say Hillary flipped on the trade deal or Obama flipped on gay marriage. It's cheap gotchas and everyone knows it is.

The problem with Trump is that he's a racist, a con-man and temperamentally unfit to be president. I do not know, given the current media conventions, how they can possibly cover this. When they say "Trump was on message today, finally moving past comments about a Mexican judge yesterday" it is a positive narrative giving Trump's racism the same treatment as "Hillary was able to focus on foreign policy today, moving past distractions caused by Madeline Albright's statements in the last week."

Somehow the press needs to explain that Trump's racism and incompetence (and AFAICT mobster dealings and Trump U scams) are important because they are real in a way Whitewater and Benghazi are not. But by their own lazy rules telling the truth this way would be "biased." I really don't see a way out.
posted by mark k at 8:51 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Frankly, I know they're biased to the point that it bothers me sometimes, but I think more media could stand to cover Trump the way the Huffington Post does. Every article about him ends with this:
Editor‘s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
At some point, the "neutrality" of the press (as if it really was neutral) just makes no sense. Treating Trump the same way they treat Clinton or Sanders makes about as much sense as covering an earthquake or hurricane or a terrorist attack and feeling like you have to spend half the time talking about the "positive aspects" of the disaster.

Of course, 40% of the population of the US voted for this disaster and are cheering it on. So I'm just glad I'm not in the media right now dealing with this insane Catch-22.
posted by mmoncur at 8:58 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm feeling a lot better about Donald's chances now than I was a few weeks and months ago because so far as I can tell, he still doesn't have an actual campaign yet.

I suppose he could just buy the one Jeb! was using.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


40% of the population of the US voted for this disaster

What? No. Trump got 46% of the popular vote in the GOP primary. But there were only ~28M votes cast. There are around 235,248,000 voting-age people in the US, so he got about 10% of the voting age population so far.

Not saying he can't win or anything, but nothing like 40% of the US population voted for him.
posted by thefoxgod at 9:01 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Er no my math is obviously wrong. 46% of (28/235) is more like 5% of the voting age population that has actually voted for Trump.
posted by thefoxgod at 9:02 PM on June 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


I feel like Obama's endorsement, and the timing, and that Sanders spoke after, bolsters my theory of how the conversation went.

Sanders, for all my concerns about his miscalculations, is emphatically not a stupid man. He's starting his pivot. I hope that he gets through to the more extreme elements of his base, because it's so fucking necessary.

I have a pie in the sky theory that Obama and Clinton have colluded to offer him some sort of Special Democrat Ambassador role that lets him dog whistle to the extremes while doing the right thing and ensuring #nevertrump.

Honestly, from my position up north, while I understand the calculus going into VP picks, choosing him would go a long way to a shortcut to getting everyone on board. And he could be Clinton's Biden, out there enough to float the trial balloons before she gets on board publicly. Obama and Biden have been a spectacular team in that regard.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 PM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Andrew Dice Clay, Robin Leach, and Donald Trump in the same room. Man, the 80s were a hell of a drug.

tony, tony, tony, 1990 is in the 80s -- it's the last year. The 90s start with 91. So, you were right, no caveats needed.

And the three of them being of the same .15 karat quality, the drug there was PCP laced with battery acid.
posted by y2karl at 9:11 PM on June 9, 2016


I'm feeling a lot better about Donald's chances now than I was a few weeks and months ago because so far as I can tell, he still doesn't have an actual campaign yet.

I suppose he could just buy the one Jeb! was
n't using.

fixed &c.
posted by dersins at 9:13 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I suppose he could just buy the one Jeb! wasn't using.

Sure! After all, Trump's a billionaire, right...?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:15 PM on June 9, 2016


Not saying he can't win or anything, but nothing like 40% of the US population voted for him.

Sorry, I meant that as a reference to polls. "40% of Americans *plan to* vote for him".
posted by mmoncur at 9:21 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Corey Booker has said that between 1990 and 2005 a new prison was built in the USA at the rate of one every ten days.

I found this to be a startling fact if true. (It is)

Building a Prison Economy in Rural America by Tracy Huling (a bit old from 2002, she has some newer stuff but I haven't finished reading all the other studies out there. Her name pops up frequently in footnotes and this piece connects many of the same dots and is an easy read, so it gets a link).

Basically, rural populations don't get the economic windfall or jobs they thought would come with the projects. Qualified (union) prison employees tend to commute rather than live in the rural areas. So, local jobs don't materialize. Private prisons have more job availability due to a higher turnover rate. But also notes adverse affect on the people employed in these facilities.

One thing that sort of shocked me. Shocked like talking to someone and saying, "You could do that but it wouldn't be fair ... oh, you already did ", is that prisoners become significant displaced people as they count toward population for federal monies and election weight.

Thankfully there is a prison gerrymandering project to try to end the practice and some States are already on board.

As dreary a picture as all that paints, I found a PDF full of graphs and charts, and it looks like prison populations are leveling off. So that might be good.

And just to pretend I can keep up with discussion,
Sen.Warren has said that two out of every three minimum wage earners is a woman.

That the minimum wage burden wasn't and isn't equally shared across genders ... this is something I did not know and had never thought about but should have because of the underlying issues of gender equality and wage equality and child poverty.

Things are rolling along here in Quebec, in my union (the CSN) we voted to support the movement for 15$. Another big construction union (the FTQ) also pledged their support, so this represents a significant chunk of the construction industry. There are a smattering of other smaller unions mostly ones on strike or about to strike who are coming on board. Plus our main separatist party is without a leader so people vying for the position are speaking to a living wage. Our election is 2 years away but everything is on the right trajectory. Hell even our Liberal government after a bunch of taxi protests actually stood up and said everyone is playing with the same requirements. License, inspections, government sets numbers per region, also sets prices and requires meters that communicate with revenu Quebec. Uber threatened to leave if we imposed any regulations on them and said tourism would suffer because people wouldn't come when they discovered their app wouldn't work in Quebec. Now they want to negotiate.

posted by phoque at 9:24 PM on June 9, 2016 [11 favorites]


Trump is a billionaire in the same way that The Queen is a trillionaire. On paper only. I mean sure he has ready cash that would change everything about my life, but fuckoff money he does not have.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:25 PM on June 9, 2016


This changes everything. Do the Trump Tower taco bowls contain Vegan Rhinos? Does Milliways serve Trump Steaks?
posted by tonycpsu at 9:37 PM on June 9, 2016


GODDAMIT DONALD J TRUMP DOES NOT KNOW WHERE HIS GODDAM TOWEL IS
posted by dersins at 9:39 PM on June 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


I wanted to do my part to stop the Trumpocalypse, sorry for failing

We have our scapegoat.
posted by bongo_x at 9:40 PM on June 9, 2016


There are very few people I'd subject to the Total Perspective Vortex. But Donald Trump...
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:40 PM on June 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Trump is a billionaire in the same way that The Queen is a trillionaire. On paper only. I mean sure he has ready cash that would change everything about my life, but fuckoff money he does not have.

Does it really matter? What's the difference between a patented Donald J. Trump other-people's-money con job and the complex financial instruments the finance sector is so respected for?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:43 PM on June 9, 2016


One (Trunp's) is a total lie. The other is a consensual lie.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:49 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump is not a frood, and definitely not hoopy.
posted by biogeo at 9:53 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


Hoopy frood? He thought you meant "loopy fraud. "
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:03 PM on June 9, 2016 [11 favorites]


Trump is a billionaire in the same way that The Queen is a trillionaire. On paper only.

Since none of us has seen his tax returns, and Donald Trump lost his libel lawsuit against Tim O'Brien after the author estimated his wealth as only in the hundreds of millions in TrumpNation, I think that even calling him a “billionaire on paper” is rather an exaggeration.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:08 PM on June 9, 2016 [7 favorites]


The real question is: what do we have to do to get a disgruntled Trump staffer to leak his tax returns?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:08 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


otoh, I'm not sure how big left libertarianism is in the U.S.

I'm here! I exist! I'm against the government and corporations! Why does everyone always ignore me?
posted by Jacqueline at 10:09 PM on June 9, 2016 [13 favorites]


June 9, 2016: "Slow Jam the News" with President Obama
posted by kirkaracha at 10:28 PM on June 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's too bad Kamala Harris is just going to be joining the senate (most likely - replacing Barbara Boxer) next year. She's pretty freaking awesome.

The primary window I have into Harris is through the opinion of some defense lawyers I'm acquainted with. They are *not* impressed with the general standard of prosecutor conduct on display in the state of California, and there's a question of how it reflects on the AG.

Would be happy to hear other perspectives.
posted by wildblueyonder at 10:30 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


...and Donald Trump lost his libel lawsuit...

I believe it was settled out of court, which is no indication that he's only worth a one or two hundred million but is an indication that he doesn't want anyone looking at his financials.
posted by PenDevil at 10:37 PM on June 9, 2016


Maybe it's just because I grew up in a complete shithole of a state, then moved to a state where the former-AG governor got drummed out of office for patronizing prostitutes, and then moved to California, but isn't "not impressed with the standard of prosecutor conduct" par for the course? I mean, that's an impressive picture in that link, but I don't know that it adds up to "And that's why Kamala Harris isn't qualified for higher office." Does she have personal involvement in this that isn't immediately apparent reading the first few paras of the article?
posted by Sara C. at 10:38 PM on June 9, 2016


By the way guys, rebellious delegate news can be found on Twitter now under #delegaterevolt
posted by corb at 11:30 PM on June 9, 2016 [22 favorites]


So now the hardcore Bernie supporters on my feed are sharing this video claiming that Google is altering search suggestions to hide criminal charges against Clinton.
Wait a minute -- are they claiming that Hillary has already been indicted but the media is covering it up? That would be ... a new low. Wow.
posted by msalt at 11:54 PM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


[Bernie said he's] "looking forward to meeting with Secretary Clinton later today to discuss how we can both work to defeat Donald Trump."

Unfortunately, what that means is he's going to ask her to be his Vice President after he wins.
posted by msalt at 11:57 PM on June 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


I didn't know much at all about Kamala Harris, but while overall I like her positions, I disagree with part of her stance on police. Here's her answering a question in the 2016 California Senate debate.
posted by halifix at 12:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


As a former San Francisco resident, it's hard for me to get past the fact that Harris got her start in politics as the girlfriend and then ex-girlfriend of the very corrupt and charming mayor Willie Brown.

Brown is comparable to maybe Edwin Edwards?
posted by msalt at 12:41 AM on June 10, 2016


Not my first pick either but you go to war with the candidates you have and not the candidates you wish you had I guess.
posted by Justinian at 1:07 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Much as I have issues with Willie Brown and I'm not completely loving every part of Harris' tenure as AG, I agree with her when she asked: "Would it make sense if you are a Martian coming to Earth that the litmus test for public office is where a candidate is in their relationship to Willie Brown?" Absent any credible allegation of wrongdoing on her part, it's really not the most relevant criteria.
posted by zachlipton at 1:11 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


corb, these tweets are certainly interesting (with the occasional Photoshop trainwreck). Thank you for sharing.
posted by duffell at 2:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have to think that if there was a any likelihood that Clinton was going to be indicted Lynch and or Comey would have warned Obama and Biden not to endorse Clinton.
posted by humanfont at 4:00 AM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


"Donald Trump or Zaphod Beeblebrox?"
That's my favourite quote, and one which people I know routinely apply to me.
I am very sad to see it applied to trump. SAD!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sad! PGA Tournament Says Adios to Trump's Doral Course
PGA Tour announced Wednesday it’s yanking its annual star-filled event away from the city of Doral after 55 tournaments.

The new location: Mexico City, in a country Trump once stated sent “rapists” to the United States over a border on which Trump wants to build a wall.

What began in 1962 as the Doral Country Club Invitational and has been the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship since 2011 will be the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship starting in 2017.
Reading various reports on this it seemed to be a combination of Trump's racist views scaring the PGA and Cadillac, the former sponsor, cutting it's sponsorship from $14 million to $6 million. A Mexican billionaire stepped in to sponsor the tournament "somewhere" in Mexico. Of course Trump is spinning this as the PGA taking foreign money and cutting American jobs just like Nabisco. He, Trump, does not blame himself in any way.
No different than Nabisco, Carrier and so many other American companies, the PGA Tour has put profit ahead of thousands of American jobs, millions of dollars in revenue for local communities and charities and the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of fans who make the tournament an annual tradition. This decision only further embodies the very reason I am running for President of the United States."
I personally applaud the PGA for kicking Donald Trump where it hurts the most-- right in the seat of his golf pants, although I am sorry the community of Doral will lose money.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


I sincerely hope Warren and Sanders stay in the Senate, where they can do the most good. Let's just make Diamond Joe el vice-president-por-vida.
posted by entropicamericana at 5:23 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]




Looks like Brooks has yet to make peace with the Donald.
posted by localhuman at 5:52 AM on June 10, 2016


You know Donald is shook when he can't nail the nickname. Goofy Warren is not going to do it.

I wonder if he has trouble nicknaming women because he can't see them as people clearly the way he can men?
posted by sallybrown at 5:52 AM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


Yes, I know it was in 1990. Regardless of what anyone else tells you, everything before Nevermind was still the 80s.

In the U.S. anyhow, I've always thought that the conceptual / cultural decades handily (and not entirely coincidentally) map onto presidential terms, so that the 50s ended and 60s started when Eisenhower left and JFK's took office in 1962, and ended with Nixon's resignation in '74 -- the 60s were way too big a decade to be confined to 10 years -- while the 80's started on the mark with Reagan's first inauguration but didn't end until Bill Clinton relieved Pappy Bush from office in '92. One exception to the pattern is that while the 90s ended when the conservative wing of the SCOTUS stole the election for W in 2000, the 21st century proper began with 9/11, not the anticlimactic hypefizzle that was Y2k.
posted by aught at 6:06 AM on June 10, 2016


roomthreeseventeen: "No, seriously -- Delete your account."

So now someone needs to explain the "Drag him queen" thing. The googles aren't helping me here.
posted by octothorpe at 6:07 AM on June 10, 2016


So now someone needs to explain the "Drag him queen" thing.

omg i just had a vision of the future where either warren or clinton roasts trump on twitter and the other one retweets the burn with the comment YAASS KWEEN
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]




Drag him queen = punishingly belittle him, fierce person I admire
posted by sallybrown at 6:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


the 21st century proper began with 9/11, not the anticlimactic hypefizzle that was Y2k.

Before 9/11 it seemed like Bush was about to start a Cold War with China.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


so that the 50s ended and 60s started when Eisenhower left and JFK's took office in 1962, and ended with Nixon's resignation in '74

JFK took office in 1960 - as far as i'm concerned, the 60s started with his assassination, although some might argue that it was when the beatles came over

that's what it seemed to me at the time
posted by pyramid termite at 6:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I look forward to "delete your account" being used in a live debate:

Moderator: "Ms. Clinton, how would you like to respond to these allegations by Mr. Trump?"

Clinton: "I just have three words for Mr. Trump: Delete your account! - Now, as I have repeatedly pointed out before, my vision for America is not based on insults and racial slurs, but rather ..."
posted by sour cream at 6:29 AM on June 10, 2016


Before 9/11 it seemed like Bush was about to start a Cold War with China.

But instead he doubled down and sowed the wind in invading Iraq, the whirlwind of which -- Syria, Isis and the refugee crisis -- we will be reaping for decades. A Cold War with China is but a gust in comparison.
posted by y2karl at 6:31 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


As a former San Francisco resident, it's hard for me to get past the fact that Harris got her start in politics as the girlfriend and then ex-girlfriend of the very corrupt and charming mayor Willie Brown.

Shit, I hope no one ever bases their decision to hire me or not on the honesty / integrity of my ex-wife. Just sayin'.
posted by aught at 6:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


Seeing Trump's public statements getting organizations and events walking sideways away from his properties makes me smile. I dare to hope that this disastrous foray into politics might ruin the horrible bastard.
posted by jackbishop at 6:38 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Shit, I hope no one ever bases their decision to hire me or not on the honesty / integrity of my ex-wife. Just sayin'.

Don't worry. This standard is only applied to women, not men. (sorry... implicit assumption that you are a man)
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]


/r/SFP is still having its temper tantrum. Still Sanders starts trashing Warren.
posted by Talez at 6:45 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


the 50s ended and 60s started when Eisenhower left and JFK's took office in 1962, and ended with Nixon's resignation in '74

JFK took office in 1960


No, he didn't. January, 1961.

Likewise, Bill Clinton did not succeed George HRHW Bush until 1993.

If you guys are going to have idiosyncratic definitions for things that are already precisely defined, at least make sure your criteria are correct.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Fandoms are even scarier when they revolve around politicians! Who knew.
posted by rorgy at 6:52 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Looking at the response to Warren's endorsement, why is it always "bought and paid for" that seems a little redundant to me.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:57 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seriously, I am despairing of my progressive friends on Facebook. One South Asian woman posted a link saying that Sanders had too much "integrity" to be President (thereby implying that Clinton has no integrity?). A black woman posted one of those hilarious memes on things she trusts more than Hillary Clinton including the Flint water supply. I truly don't understand. How did these statements about Clinton (that she's untrustworthy, does not have integrity, lies so much etc. etc.) come to be accepted as fact, and how did my friends, who are mostly science PhDs btw, fail to apply the same rigor to these statements as they do to their work? And can't they see, particularly those who are women of color, that they're shooting themselves in the foot if they continue to put down Clinton, making it more likely that we have a Trump presidency? It's like there's a tsunami expected any moment and all people can talk about is the rain.
posted by peacheater at 6:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]


"You know Donald is shook when he can't nail the nickname."

Meanwhile, thanks to his own responses, the "Thin Skinned Man" nick will be impossible to shake.
posted by klarck at 7:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


it's hard for me to get past the fact that Harris got her start in politics as the girlfriend and then ex-girlfriend of the very corrupt and charming mayor Willie Brown.

So are you voting for Bill Clinton this fall or not? Are you hoping Bruce Mann gets into the White House?
posted by happyroach at 7:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


as far as i'm concerned, the 60s started with his assassination, although some might argue that it was when the beatles came over
Yes, in America, perceptions of "decades" are usually tied to changes in Presidential Administrations. Remember the Dream Academy song "Life in a Northern Town"?
He said in winter 1963
It felt like the world would freeze
With John F. Kennedy
And The Beatles
(A very '80s song) Yep, that was very much a transitional time, which makes sense because the first part of the '60s were almost identical culturally to the last part of the '50s. And from Kennedy's assassination to Nixon's resignation... that is SO MUCH a DECADE.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:11 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


JFK took office in 1960 - as far as i'm concerned, the 60s started with his assassination, although some might argue that it was when the beatles came over

You're right, of course; I had my election years confused. Maybe my subconscious was shy to say the 60s began in 63, the year I was born, too self-important. ;-)
posted by aught at 7:13 AM on June 10, 2016


But Donald Drumpf could be considered "thick skinned" if you assume that skin is covered with thousands of razor-sharp quills. He reacts badly to even non-criticism because it's just not safe to get close enough to see him.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2016


Shit, I hope no one ever bases their decision to hire me or not on the honesty / integrity of my ex-wife. Just sayin'.

I turned my dad around on The Bill Issue by saying, "how would you feel if I called you after my next performance review and told you I didn't get a promotion because my boss thought i dated the wrong guy for me this year?" Got a big laugh out of that one. Same goes for Harris.
posted by sallybrown at 7:15 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]


"why is it always "bought and paid for" that seems a little redundant to me."

Common mode of emphasis in English, probably from legal French after 1066 where it was common to repeat legal couplets with an Anglo-Saxon word and a French one, like "null and void" or "will and testament." (Cease and desist, full faith and credit, aid and abet ...)

Anyway, if you want to emphasize the importance of something in English, turning it into a technically-redundant doublet is one of the very oldest and most universally understood ways to do that. Beats italics!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [54 favorites]


If you guys are going to have idiosyncratic definitions for things that are already precisely defined, at least make sure your criteria are correct.

For some reason the phrase "spitballing nitpicking" just jumped into my head.
posted by aught at 7:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


The primary window I have into Harris is through the opinion of some defense lawyers I'm acquainted with. They are *not* impressed with the general standard of prosecutor conduct on display in the state of California, and there's a question of how it reflects on the AG.

I'm just going to point to her achievements on consumer protection, environmental protection, child advocacy, her longtime anti-death penalty and pro-gun control stances, and her impressive list of credentials and endorsements as to why I like her. YMMV.
posted by malocchio at 7:23 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


This explains a lot.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


Also, as far as partners of female politicians go - it's not a coincidence that women often (in the past, very often) get involved in politics through their male partners. For a long time we didn't grow up thinking that was a career path for us. It's still a very very rocky one. We often don't have the old boys' network setting us up with the funds needed to run. We often don't have the mentors grooming us. We come to this through happenstance (or at times, a kind of shortcut) a lot because in many ways we are still blocked from coming to this work intentionally.

The first woman ever elected to Congress was financed by her brother. A lot of the women to follow were widows of already-elected men. The first woman President will likely be a former First Lady; the woman who got closest to a nominee on the GOP side is the wife of a prominent politician. The women who break this pattern (someone like Mikulski) should be viewed as absolute fighters and champions for making it so far with those odds.

That's something we should look askance at, but not because it has anything to do with the worth of the woman involved - rather, because it tells us how nearly impossible it still is for women to scale these heights.
posted by sallybrown at 7:25 AM on June 10, 2016 [38 favorites]


How did these statements about Clinton (that she's untrustworthy, does not have integrity, lies so much etc. etc.) come to be accepted as fact

There's this whole long list of scandalous accusations against Hillary Clinton, and none of them has ever resulted in her getting in actual legal trouble.

So you can interpret that as either proof that she's not guilty of any of it, implying that there's a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her, or proof that she's somehow "above the law," implying that she's escaped justice via corruption, cronyism, and bribes.

Many people find the latter explanation much more plausible, either because they have their own experiences with corruption and unfairness in our justice system (this is probably where the Sanders fans who say this stuff are coming from), or because they consider themselves right-wing and think right-wingers are much too decent and honest to conspire against someone in that way (this is where the Republicans are coming from when they say this stuff.)

It's going to be hard to disabuse people of either notion, since both are based in personal experiences ("But I know that the justice system is corrupt!"/"But I know Right-wingers are good people!"). And either type of personal experience just makes it seem so likely that Hillary Clinton is getting away with stuff.

But the problem is that this argument boils down to "How could she be innocent when so many people have accused her of doing bad stuff?" The accusations themselves are the only evidence against her. It's "Where there's smoke, there's fire!" and "Of course there's no evidence against her. She's bought off everyone who could testify against her." And there is no way to disprove that argument. And it feeds on itself. The lack of evidence itself becomes evidence of her guilt (because she must be hiding it!)

At that point it's unfalsifiable. So can't be disproved with any kind of scientific argument (which would require falsifiability) or legal arugment (which would assume innocent until proven guilty).

The only way to change people's minds would be to convince them that the legal system may be kind of messed up, but it's not THAT corrupt, or that all the Republicans they personally know may be good people, but SOME Republicans really are assholes. And those beliefs violate people's tribal identities. "The system is rigged" and "Republicans are the good guys" are so fundamental to some people's sense of how the world works that they might as well be religious beliefs. No evidence will ever undermine them.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [29 favorites]


Also: you tend to date the people you see a lot. If you're working in campaigns or friends with lots of folks working in local government you're likely to date or marry someone doing the same.
posted by R343L at 7:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


...she's somehow "above the law," implying that she's escaped justice via corruption, cronyism, and bribes.
That's a PERFECT description of Donald Trump! (Except for the 'she' part; if Donald were female, (s)he never would've gotten away with so much)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:32 AM on June 10, 2016


Re: my comment on The Donald as "thick skinned with razor sharp quills"... here's a Trump Cat Scratcher.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:38 AM on June 10, 2016


On the subject of female politicians being involved with male politicians...

Did you know that 43% of married female physicists are married to other physicists, whereas only 6% of married male physicists have a physicist spouse)? (cite http://www.physics.wm.edu/~sher/survey1.html)

(I'm in that 43%, BTW)

I think there are two factors underlying that 1) there are just a lot more male physicists than female physicists, so that will necessarily result in an imbalance and 2) There's a social stigma against the woman in a hetero relationship being perceived as being smarter or making more money, so I think that narrows the dating pool for female physicists (This page says a full 79% of female physicists marry a physicist or other scientist! http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2000/JUNE2000/McNeilandSher.html)

I think the exact same arguments apply to female politcians. They are the minority of politicians, so all the dual-politician couples out there are going to take up a much bigger percentage of the female politician population. And I there there is some social stigma that guys would feel about marrying someone with a more powerful and high profile career, which is going to narrow the dating pool.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:40 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


Sorry, I mostly posted it here because I can't bitch about it on Facebook without causing drama.

I've reached the point in life that if I do ever actually make a facebook account its sole purpose will be to be That Friend who will gleefully tell off your racist/bigoted/idiot friends and relatives when you cannot.

can't decide if i should charge an annual membership fee or on a per-case basis
posted by poffin boffin at 7:43 AM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]


WSJ: At the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information is a series of emails between American diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington about whether to oppose specific drone strikes in Pakistan.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side’’—government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters—as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a Central Intelligence Agency drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe.

Some of the emails were then forwarded by Mrs. Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said. Investigators have raised concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems.

posted by Drinky Die at 7:44 AM on June 10, 2016






I get why they want to, and obviously Trump is a shitshow horror.

And yet... it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him. In exactly the same way it would be fundamentally undemocratic for Sanders to use superdelegates to ignore the will of the majority who voted for Clinton.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:53 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a Central Intelligence Agency drone strike went ahead,

It seems like the Wall Street Journal is trying to make this sound, like, super nefarious.

The thing is, though, it kind of sounds to me like a pretty good idea.

I mean, I dunno, shouldn't the department tasked with international relations have a place in the discussion of how, when and who the CIA kills in foreign countries?
posted by dersins at 7:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sometimes democracies fail. No use going down with the ship for an ideal. Preserve the party and be more democratic but more importantly more wise and intelligent in the future.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2016


shouldn't the department tasked with international relations have a place in the discussion of how, when and who* the CIA kills in foreign countries?

*also whether
posted by dersins at 8:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him.
[Trump]

"Democratic" is something we value in our political processes, but it's not the only thing we value, or necessarily the highest priority above all else. Otherwise we would have a direct democracy instead of a representative democracy, with referrendums for everything. And we wouldn't need a Constitution, which puts limits on what the government can do, regardless of the will of the people.

We could get rid of party conventions and just directly elect our party nominees. But nobody is really advocating for that. Because everybody pretty much acknowledges that sometimes the foxes do vote to eat the hens, and we need to put some barriers in the way of that kind of democracy.

As long as everyone stays within the formal rules of the convention system, then using whatever process is allowable within those rules to stop Trump is totally allowing the system to function AS INTENDED to stop his fox-supporters (haha-- they really are Fox supporters!) from eating up the rest of the Republican party.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:07 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


And yet... it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him. In exactly the same way it would be fundamentally undemocratic for Sanders to use superdelegates to ignore the will of the majority who voted for Clinton.

Saying that a delegate revolt would be fundamentally undemocratic kinda implies that the process leading up to that potential revolt wasn't fundamentally undemocratic. The whole process is kinda 'fundamentally undemocratic' from top to bottom already. As someone said earlier, Trump was chosen by around 5% of the voting-age public - is that really democratic? Is the fact that we structurally really only get two parties to choose from democratic? Hell, we didn't used to have primaries at all - does that invalidate all those elections before primaries existed?
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Well no, of course not. But of the people who voted in the primaries, a majority have voted for Clinton and Trump. They cast their votes in the belief that they would be counted. That's democracy in action, right? My vote gets counted, whether it's for the eventual winner or for a ham sandwich. How is it even remotely acceptable that votes can be ignored?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


And yet... it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him.

This is one of those things where my principles and pragmatism really do not get along. In principle, the one thing I find really heartening about Donald Trump's candidacy is that it is proof positive that the parties do not have the control they think they do. A sufficiently riled populace can override their will, and that needs to happen for democracy to survive, obviously.

On the other hand, it's a racist, autocratic, wife-beating dumpster fire of a human being who proved it, and he straight-up cannot be allowed into the White House. So while in principle I'm not crazy about these underhanded attempts to stop him (or the superdelegates in the Democratic Party, which are an above-board means of achieving the same thing if it happens in their own party), my pragmatic side is having a real problem getting worked up about it at all. It's a really uncomfortable ambivalence for me.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:15 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is the fact that we structurally really only get two parties to choose from democratic?

Certainly this isn't a new question, George Washington himself more or less called the current status quo during his lifetime because it had happened before and has been happening since.
posted by Phyltre at 8:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


...The real choice facing Sanders over the next couple of weeks is what kind of lesson he wants to impart to his supporters.

Does he want to tell them that the system is rigged, and that candidates worth rallying for don't have a chance to win? That they may as well join the large group of Americans who don't really participate in the political process at all?

Or does he want to tell them that when you fight the good fight, you sometimes lose, and then you stop and think about how to win next time? There are literally thousands of elected offices in the United States of America, virtually all of them easier to win than the White House. And there are millions of Americans — largely people of color — who seem broadly amenable to the main themes of Sanders's campaign but who didn't buy into the particulars of Sanders's persona.

If the people who bought unprecedented fundraising success to the Sanders campaign turn that passion and commitment to other, more winnable contests, they will score some wins. If they recruit a broader base of champions, they will gain more allies.

But to succeed, they need to do what Bernie's done over the course of his career — work hard and keep trying — rather than do what he's been saying he's going to do over the past month and waste time on a deluded and slightly ridiculous superdelegate chase that can only end in humiliation.
It's time for Bernie Sanders to admit he lost and drop out
posted by y2karl at 8:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Are the primaries part of the nation's actual, legal electoral process, though? I mean that as a serious question — I've always thought of the parties themselves as private clubs, where the actual rules of the political process only apply to the general. I mean, it isn't effectively true in a rigid two-party system, but at least in theory the parties should be able to pick their nominees by ouija board if they want to, right?
posted by you're a kitty! at 8:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


The system is democratic in the sense that anyone can start their own political party and structure that party's rules in any way they like to allow as much or little direct democratic selection of nominees as they desire. The thing that's undemocratic is the part where only two parties are viable at the national level, which creates network effects that extend deep enough into the state and local levels that it'd be very hard to bootstrap a viable third party to make the system as a whole more democratic.

And, yeah, there are legitimate questions about how democratic we want to make it. Most people reading this want the system to stop Trump, but others of us might want to use those same levers to stop other candidates we don't like, or would be livid if those same levers were used to stop candidates we like.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:20 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


at least in theory the parties should be able to pick their nominees by ouija board if they want to, right?

Yes. The rules they are currently operating under are mostly self-imposed, and much much more recent than the parties themselves.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:20 AM on June 10, 2016


If people are this mad about Warren's endorsement, what are they going to do when Sanders endorses?
posted by zutalors! at 8:21 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh wait Sanders isn't a woman
posted by zutalors! at 8:21 AM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]


Trump has a plurality but not majority of the Republican votes; approximately 45%, which based on existing rules, earned him a majority of the delegates. On the other side, with about 45% of the votes, Bernie Sanders lost (it's always clearer when it's a two-horse race).
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 AM on June 10, 2016


How is it even remotely acceptable that votes can be ignored?

It's not, under normal circumstances. But the mechanisms to ignore them exist in case of emergency. Just like it's not okay to go around hacking up the building with an ax under normal circumstances.

But "in case of emergency, break glass." The normal rules don't apply. I think Trump is an emergency.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


538: Will Trump Screw Up Everything We Know About Elections?
natesilver: In my view, Trump’s a pretty good test of how much candidates matter. If he loses big in what should otherwise be a close election, that’s evidence that they matter quite a bit. And I’d argue that would go more against the political science consensus than toward it, although Julia’s absolutely right that it’s hard to define what the consensus is.

julia: My final thoughts: ambiguity and ambivalence are the watchwords of this political moment. Close elections, strong partisanship/polarization, new horizons in types of candidates. I’d also argue that both parties are moving on from the Reagan/New Democrat era, and so there’s murkiness about what the next sets of political debates (like in the general sense, not like podiums and moderators) will be.

natesilver: I also agree with Julia that Trump is extremely overdetermined. He’s unusual in so many ways. If he loses big — or wins big — we might be able to say that it had something to do with Trump, but we might not be able to say why, exactly.
lots of good links inside.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like aliens researching our society would be at times unclear if we elect horses to the Presidency.
posted by zutalors! at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


How is it even remotely acceptable that votes can be ignored?

In a 5-4 decision...
posted by delfin at 8:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


ABC: Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.

The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.

Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act after more the two years of litigation with the government.

posted by Drinky Die at 8:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I feel like aliens researching our society would be at times unclear if we elect horses to the Presidency.

Ah, I think I just figured out who Trump's running mate will be!
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:29 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]




It's great how practices like patronage politics and mishandling of classified information that have been business as usual for decades are suddenly so vitally important to conservative activists. I just can't imagine where their newfound concern for these things is coming from.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


By the way - The epicenter of California's earthquake early this morning was at Jackass Flat. I think the Earth is trying to communicate with us.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yup delfin, and that was unacceptable.

I mean, I'm on record repeatedly saying that Trump cannot be allowed into the White House. But you can't just bend some rules to make sure he doesn't--that would render the votes of everyone who cast a ballot for him (yes yes, cast a ballot for a delegate to cast a ballot for him, same diff) meaningless. Ditto Sanders and superdelegates. People, rightly or wrongly, voted in a given way, and I think there's a non-trivial danger in adding an asterisk to votes that says "unless we really really don't like who you voted for." It just seems profoundly against the principles of democracy to do that, to me.

Beyond the principled concern, there's a very practical one, which I've mentioned before: a certain percentage of Trump supporters have already shown themselves to be violent. I doubt that their reaction to the nomination being rules-lawyered away from him is going to be met with a sober and considered response.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]




But you can't just bend some rules to make sure he doesn't--that would render the votes of everyone who cast a ballot for him (yes yes, cast a ballot for a delegate to cast a ballot for him, same diff)

I think you probably can bend some rules, though. Contested conventions aren't new. They are just rare in modern times.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


But you can't just bend some rules to make sure he doesn't

They're not bending rules -- the first rule of Political Party Club is that you can change the rules of Political Party Club at any time. That's just how the system is.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:40 AM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]




In Paul Ryan’s District, a Community Struggling: Peter and his 9-year-old daughter, Love, met us at the Halo homeless shelter back in Racine. They had recently returned from 10 months in Chicago, where Peter cared for his mother who is diabetic while working as a driver of a medical supplies van. When his mother was stable, Peter and Love returned to Racine and moved in with his girlfriend. But she had fallen behind on rent due to her own hospitalization with sickle cell anemia, and they were evicted from the apartment.

Peter and Love slept in his car until they discovered Halo. The organization found them a permanent, subsidized house for which Peter now pays 30 percent of his income. He obtained work operating a forklift, but the work dried up and he was laid off at the end of May. Peter described himself as “very skilled,” and was confident he would quickly find another job given his experience as a commercial vehicle driver, medical assistant, machine operator, and working in community-based residential facilities. He had filled out 100 job applications in the past week, and got two job interviews.

posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:42 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]




I don't think it's very helpful to post national surveys. We don't vote that way.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:49 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sen. David Purdue (R-GA) leads "religious conservatives" in a prayer for Barack Obama's death

But where did Trump possibly come from?
posted by chris24 at 8:51 AM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


But where did Trump possibly come from?

A Republican senator just prayed that Obama’s “days be few.” This is how the GOP got Trump.
Comments like Perdue’s are the context in which Trump ran. For years, Republican voters have been told that the president is a Muslim, a Kenyan, a socialist. They have heard Newt Gingrich fret over his "Kenyan anti-Colonial mindset," Mitt Romney worry that the United States is "inches away from no longer being a free economy," and, yes, Donald Trump argue that he’s hiding the true circumstances of his birth. They were thrilled when Ben Carson called Obamacare "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery" and pleased when Ted Cruz agreed to look into whether Obama was planning an armed takeover of Texas.

And those examples are limited to national leaders in the Republican Party. The rhetoric coming from state senators, talk radio hosts, and local tea party chairs is much worse. Grassroots Republicans have been told for years that the struggle with Obama is existential and civilizational, that the disagreements are fundamental and scary, that the future of the country they love dearly is in doubt. Republican leaders are not responsible for all of this rhetoric, but they have consistently indulged it and rarely challenged it. Rather than fighting the hysteria, they have sought to harness it for their own ends.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:55 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]


Sen. David Purdue (R-GA) leads "religious conservatives" in a prayer for Barack Obama's death

But where did Trump possibly come from?


"There was a buncha them theosophists at the end of the bar, raisin' the devil -- had 'im about three feet off the floor . . . "
 
posted by Herodios at 8:55 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's this whole long list of scandalous accusations against Hillary Clinton, and none of them has ever resulted in her getting in actual legal trouble.

There's also another thread of reasoning for Corrupt Politician Hillary, which is a little less rooted in actual facts and hard journalism and paying attention to history.

I lived through the Clinton administration from middle school through my teen years, during probably the most impressionable time in a young woman's life when it comes to what society's expectations are for women. So I saw this all unfold, at first as the proverbial Martian anthropologist, and later, as I grew up, as just a regular person in society.

When Clinton first ran in '92, people fucking HATED Hillary. She was the first career-woman First Lady. People hated that she wasn't pretty/didn't look like she was trying hard to be pretty. People hated that she wanted to have a role in Bill's administration, and they hated that she and Bill had the kind of egalitarian marriage where that might even be thinkable. She's been portrayed in the press from Day 1 as a grasping shrewish Lady Macbeth type, as unfeminine, and probably worst of all as not following the rules of womanhood. Be pretty, hook a man, let him take care of you, don't worry your pretty head about anything else. That's the "corruption" Hillary is guilty of.

And then from there, it morphed into a sort of "sleep your way to the top" sleaze, with people assuming that Hillary couldn't really be qualified to influence healthcare policy, or later to run for office in her own right. She must be riding Bill's coattails. So there's a second form of corruption for Hillary. Using her feminine wiles to get something she otherwise isn't entitled to.

And then when Hillary became a senator, it was easy enough to use those vague sentiments of "rule breaker" and "she only got it because of her husband" to assume that she must be corrupt in the more traditional political sense. Obviously someone so odious couldn't possibly be doing good work in politics. She must be a slick insider wheeling and dealing through illegitimate means. Since everything she's ever done so far was illegitimate and below-board. Because her vagina. Duh.

A lot of people's general assumptions of Hillary as a corrupt liar have much more to do with a character in a play by someone who died 500 years ago than they do with any actual facts about Hillary Clinton.
posted by Sara C. at 9:15 AM on June 10, 2016 [78 favorites]


National polling is of major importance to Johnson and Stein right now while they make a case to be on the debate stage. They may have a good shot because it would be wise for Trump to try and get them involved. One on one with Hillary is not going to go well for him.

Beyond that though, the winner of the popular vote almost always wins the electoral vote. Before Gore, which shouldn't even count because the Court stole that one, the last time the popular vote winner didn't take the election was 1888. National Polls are one useful data point to help evaluate the current state of the race.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


"Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president," Perdue spokeswoman Megan Whittemore emailed POLITICO after this article was published. "He is no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of."
The brass fucking balls. The brass fucking balls on these people.

"No we didn't wish him harm by asking god that his days be few".

HE LITERALLY DID THAT. HE LITERALLY FUCKING DID THAT.
posted by Talez at 9:22 AM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]


And yet... it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for [Trump].

I don't think that is entirely correct.
First of all, the millions of people who voted for him can still vote for him in the GE, if only as a write-in candidate.
So they are not really disenfranchised since they can still VOTE for anyone they want to.

The only vote that doesn't count is (possibly) the one from the primaries. But then again, why should that vote count anyway? It's up to the parties to select their candidates and the US is kinda unique in that it allows everyone and their grandma to vote in primaries. In most (all?) countries, candidates are decided either through backdoor shenanigans or by much smaller party committees. Surely you wouldn't discount all those countries as undemocratic.

So, as long as you're not a card-carrying member of the party, you don't really get to bitch about how the party selects their candidates.

Card-carrying member, but don't like what the party is doing? Well then just found your own party! (But don't call it the "Democratic Party" - that name's taken.)
posted by sour cream at 9:29 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've reached the point in life that if I do ever actually make a facebook account its sole purpose will be to be That Friend who will gleefully tell off your racist/bigoted/idiot friends and relatives when you cannot.

can't decide if i should charge an annual membership fee or on a per-case basis


I mean, obviously you should be using surge pricing. ride the waves of the bonkers election cycle.
posted by palomar at 9:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


well, this is also why I don't entirely hate the superdelegate process on the Dem side.
posted by zutalors! at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016


Stein (G) 4%

This might be Gary Johnson's year to give the LP a better showing than usual, but Jill Stein won't get 4% in the actual general. Hell, the Green's normal fraction of a percent will probably be even lower with all the Sanders write-in votes.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


So, in a PPP PA poll, more people found the Phillie Phanatic to be more qualified than Trump for the presidency.

And 14% weren't sure.

This is why cirrhosis is an occupational hazard for Onion editors.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:41 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


The only vote that doesn't count is (possibly) the one from the primaries. But then again, why should that vote count anyway?

Because they were told it would?

Trump isn't even a garbage fire because at least that can provide you some warmth. So by all means, make the case that this is a chemotherapy approach where the poison might do more sum total good than harm. But it is incontrovertible that it is opposite of democratic principles to say that we should ignore the selection of the majority of people who bothered to go out and vote in the primaries, after they have all done so with a promised expectation.

The fact that they aren't all the registered voters or all the possible voters or all the citizens of the country or all the people in the world impacted by a presidential selection is irrelevant. It's playing Calvinball++, changing the score after you finished playing the game. "Oh, but the fine print says we can" is not something that people think is Right unless they're trying to rationalize. This is a subversion of voter will that deserves to be faced honestly, not with fakey rationalization.
posted by phearlez at 9:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


And can't they see, particularly those who are women of color, that they're shooting themselves in the foot if they continue to put down Clinton, making it more likely that we have a Trump presidency?

Are they actually Bernie or Bust? Did they actually post that they are refusing to vote for her? Because one can simultaneously bash Clinton, and vote for her, against Trump. Cognitive dissonance runs the two party system.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


And I feel like it should be able to go without saying, but I guess not - if you're cool with this for Trump because of Reasons which you think are great, you pretty much should shut your mouth 100% about saying anything about the Bernie folks wanting to do a similar sort of thing on the dem side. They for certain belive they have absolutely perfect reasoning there too, you just don't happen to agree with them. Either it's okay to toss aside the choice of your primary voters or it isn't.
posted by phearlez at 9:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Are they actually Bernie or Bust? Did they actually post that they are refusing to vote for her? Because one can simultaneously bash Clinton, and vote for her, against Trump. Cognitive dissonance runs the two party system.
They live in New York, so I don't suppose their individual vote will matter that much one way or the other. However, I think at this point, if you serious about defeating Trump in November, it is counterproductive to keep bashing Clinton - you run the risk of others being swayed by your words into not voting at all or voting for Trump.
posted by peacheater at 9:54 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


And yet... it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him.

It would have been nice if the Republicans had decided this in advance and saved taxpayers the hundreds of millions of dollars to operate their discarded primaries.
posted by JackFlash at 9:57 AM on June 10, 2016


I just called Senator Perdue's office to express my displeasure at his prayer that Obama's "days be few," that his comments are not representing the people of Georgia well, and that he should apologize for such a vile statement. A polite staffer indicated that he would "pass along my comments to the senator."

His Atlanta office can be phoned at (404) 865-0087, if any other Georgians feel similarly moved to express their opinion.
posted by biogeo at 9:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]


I am seeing a lot of interesting stuff from my Bernie supporting friends on Facebook. Some really are Bernie Or Bust, or at least are kicking and screaming and refusing to vote for Hillary in the general. There's also some bitching about electoral procedures from people who've clearly never voted in any election before. Most of those, in my feed at least, are white guys and are people who don't strike me as particularly political.

But my more savvy Bernie supporting friends are posting a lot of stuff that looks Seven Stages Of Grief-ish, or like watching them move along the road to Hillary. I've seen a lot of "Oh hey so I did some reading an apparently Hillary isn't *that" bad," "Hillary may be corrupt but I'll hold my nose and vote", etc. I disagree with a lot of this stuff, but I can tell that they're serious people who are taking this seriously and are going to fall in line within the next month or so.

I've also started seeing the Hillary stickers show up on cars in traffic this week, and more and more Facebook friends come out at Hillary supporters. I definitely see a light at the end of the tunnel on all the Bernie drama, and I think it's ultimately going to make as much of an impact as the PUMAs did in '08.
posted by Sara C. at 10:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [18 favorites]


Are they actually Bernie or Bust? Did they actually post that they are refusing to vote for her?


I present to you the argument made by one South Asian American woman:
this is not about delegates or super delegates or popular votes or caucuses or open primaries or voter suppression. those are all important issues but let's not forget the most important one of all

hillary clinton

i'm not voting for a warmongering flip-flopper. this is a woman whose "firewall" was once made of "superpredators". a woman who lied about sniper fire in bosnia, who introduced the racist attacks on obama which gave way to the birther movement, who once said her faith could not permit her to ever support gay marriage, who supported a coup in Honduras and a war in Iraq.

this is a woman who doesn't support the fight for 15, who doesn't support single-payer healthcare, who doesn't support an end to fracking.

a woman who supports the death penalty and has accepted more Super PAC and corporate money than any other candidate this election cycle.

so i don't care what the popular vote count is or what the delegate math is. i'm not a sheep following the herd. as a progressive, i cannot and will not vote for hillary clinton.

In short: Trump is scary but I'm not convinced he's as scary as we all keep saying he is. I support continued agitation and a movement that translates into a third party. I'm not going to just hold my nose and vote for clinton
posted by bardophile at 10:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I just called Senator Perdue's office to express my displeasure at his prayer that Obama's "days be few," that his comments are not representing the people of Georgia well, and that he should apologize for such a vile statement. A polite staffer indicated that he would "pass along my comments to the senator."

His Atlanta office can be phoned at (404) 865-0087, if any other Georgians feel similarly moved to express their opinion.


His Russell Senate office number is (202) 224-3521.
posted by sallybrown at 10:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Why don't I have Facebook friends like that? We need to trade.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Because they were told it would?

Where? When? At best, there have been hand-wavey suggestions that the primary votes are counted for the purposes of determining delegates, who are bound by nothing more than their word that they'll vote the way they were told to by the voters. In some cases (e.g. Nevada) there are even more layers of indirection between the voters and the final result. If either party wanted to, they could literally use games of rock, paper, scissors to determine their delegate allocation. It's their game, their rules.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm uncomfortable with the "Doesn't X group know they are voting against their own interest???" I've had enough of that from Sanders people.
posted by zutalors! at 10:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [12 favorites]


Somebody said way upthread that with the predicted implosion of the GOP they could see the party of Hillary become the new center-right party and the Bernie faction become the new left party. But that fails to account for almost half the voters in the country, who want an extreme right party, and who suddenly become electable again if the Democrats split. We can indeed drag the electorate to the left eventually, but we have to wait for a lot of voters to die still.
posted by rikschell at 10:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, the "I will never vote for Hillary!" statements are unfortunate, but I remain convinced that the most likely course is the reverse-Bradley Effect (the PUMA Effect?) that will lead to these diehards voting for Clinton come November anyway.

The primary race isn't even over yet, the DNC happens, who knows what Sanders will do in terms of quietly endorsing Clinton. There's still plenty of time for peace and reconciliation within the party, in terms of having a united front against disaster.

That said, people can again vote for Clinton without actually having to like her candidacy. That's the whole point of lesser of two evils.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


But Hillary and Bernie aren't substantially different, politically. The difference is that he has a penis and thus has escaped the decades of obsessive vitriol that she's had to put up with.
posted by Sara C. at 10:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


In short: Trump is scary but I'm not convinced he's as scary as we all keep saying he is.

That is INSANE.
posted by agregoli at 10:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [30 favorites]


This Perdue thing has me steaming on so many levels. Using bible verse 'Let his days be few' that his immediate listeners will know is followed by 'Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.'

It serves no purpose but as a swipe, Obama isn't running for anything. He's no doubt looking forward to walking away from these constant insults. Perdue is the worst kind of phony bible thumper, 'corporate turnaround' American job loss facilitator ass wipe and connected money jerk who even gives the Republican party a bad name.

How are jerks like this not happy with enjoying their riches and ocean views? How do people that vote for him not see his record as just the kind of person who is sending their jobs away to squeeze a bit more profitability so as to enrich themselves and move on to the next 'consulting' gig? It is such a foreign mind set. But I guess quoting bible verse makes it all good?
posted by readery at 10:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


Reason #472 why we shouldn't take too much stock in polls right now -- in the same week that PPP has Clinton and Trump tied in Pennsylvania, another poll has Clinton leading by 7 in... Kansas.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Well no, of course not. But of the people who voted in the primaries, a majority have voted for Clinton and Trump. They cast their votes in the belief that they would be counted. That's democracy in action, right? My vote gets counted, whether it's for the eventual winner or for a ham sandwich. How is it even remotely acceptable that votes can be ignored?"

You have made this objection in multiple prior threads and multiple mefites have spent a LOT OF TIME explaining to you the functioning and limits of the American system and how the primary system is NOT a pure democratic system, nor a governmental function obligated to follow governmental rules. I find it odd that you continue to insist on the pure democratic functioning of a system you're not a part of and DON'T have a vote in to be counted or ignored, and I find it frustrating that you have brought up literally the exact same argument in thread after thread, no matter how many times people explain it.

I don't know if you're just ignoring the mefites who have gone out of their way to explain the intricacies of the system to you, or if you're profoundly committed to the US system functioning in a way it does not function but you think it should.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:23 AM on June 10, 2016 [29 favorites]


How are jerks like this not happy with enjoying their riches and ocean views? How do people that vote for him not see his record as just the kind of person who is sending their jobs away to squeeze a bit more profitability so as to enrich themselves and move on to the next 'consulting' gig? It is such a foreign mind set. But I guess quoting bible verse makes it all good?

I got some traction with the (very polite) person who answered the phone by emphasizing that as a Senator he has a lot of power and is supposed to act as a role model, and as a Christian we are all supposed to be examples of loving kindness towards one another. It may have helped that I can do a whole southern-accented church lady thing. She wasn't fighting me on any of it, and I got the sense she was like "thanks idiot boss for this day from hell" more than "my boss is right!"
posted by sallybrown at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


Obama attends Malia's high school graduation: "She's one of my best friends. And it's going to be hard for me not to have her around all the time. But she's ready to go. You can tell. She's just a really smart, capable person and she's ready to make her own way."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [23 favorites]


In short: Trump is scary but I'm not convinced he's as scary as we all keep saying he is.

"It looks like you don't remember the GW Bush administration,
Would you like some help with that?"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


In short: Trump is scary but I'm not convinced he's as scary as we all keep saying he is.

That is INSANE.


No, no, no, they were right - he's not as scary as we think he is; he's probably scarier.
posted by sallybrown at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him.

Democracy voted for Jim Crow laws, Hitler, and at one time, slavery. If democracy wants to elect a racist fascist, it can try its best, but I am in no way bound by it. At a certain point, you have to take a stand before the country burns. I am not willing to be a "good German."
posted by corb at 10:25 AM on June 10, 2016 [33 favorites]


The last few days have made me realize I don't think I've ever heard a rational political argument that involved any sort of sheep analogy. Don't be sheep, won't be a sheep, sheeple, etc...I'm starting to wonder if sheep analogies deserve their own Godwin's Law-esque rule.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


But Hillary and Bernie aren't substantially different, politically.

That's a good segue into this Rolling Stone piece that supports my "McGovern Redux!" narrative:

Matt Taibbi: Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie

This was no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in '08 or even Gore-Bradley in '00. [...]

Voter concerns rapidly take a back seat to the daily grind of the job. The ideal piece of legislation in almost every case is a Frankensteinian policy concoction that allows the sponsoring pol to keep as many big-money donors in the fold as possible without offending actual human voters to the point of a ballot revolt.

This dynamic is rarely explained to the public, but voters on both sides of the aisle have lately begun guessing at the truth, and spent most of the last year letting the parties know it in the primaries. People are sick of being thought of as faraway annoyances who only get whatever policy scraps are left over after pols have finished servicing the donors they hang out with at Redskins games.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's
Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated."

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

posted by Apocryphon at 10:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [23 favorites]


But Hillary and Bernie aren't substantially different, politically.

I don't agree, actually. I mean, I agree that they are more politically similar than they are different, and that the fact that she's a woman accounts for a good fraction of the hate she's received over her career, but there are important real differences between them. Sanders is an ideological purist (or at least farther out on the purist axis) who is generally unwilling to compromise in the name of making incremental progress towards his larger political goals. Clinton is a pragmatist who has made a number of unpopular decisions and compromises in order to further her larger political goals. This fact also helps to explain a lot of the hate towards Clinton from the more purist-minded Left.
posted by biogeo at 10:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


Personally I'm squicked about "stealing" the nomination away from Trump despite being very well versed in how political parties work. Not because it's "undemocratic", but because I think it sets a bad precedent.

Not to mention that I'm not thrilled at any of the other prospects, and I actually think that Trump has some unique vulnerabilities that someone like Cruz (or really whoever else the Republicans would propose) doesn't have. I suppose if I knew Trump would win, I'd rather almost anyone else as the Republican nominee. But I believe wholeheartedly that Clinton can beat Trump in the general. I'm ready to play through to the next hole and don't see any reason to root for a Republican hail mary pass. (Yay sports metaphors!)

I especially don't like the message of "Trump averted!" coming before the general to usher in the inevitable "But Cruz and Clinton are basically the same! Vote for Jill Stein!" bullshit.

Maybe I'm just too much of a Democrat to give a shit about who the Republican nominee is.
posted by Sara C. at 10:32 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


the primary system is NOT a pure democratic system, nor a governmental function obligated to follow governmental rules.

Yet it is paid for by taxpayers' government dollars.
posted by JackFlash at 10:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yet it is paid for by taxpayers' government dollars.

So's the military, but I don't have people with the words "Chairman", "Joint", or "Chiefs" in their job titles calling me for tactical advice.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


Biogeo, I agree with your assessment of Clinton and Sanders on an "ideological purity" spectrum, but I don't think it's a function of independent stances on things. I think it's because Bernie Sanders is a career senator from a small backwater liberal state where his constituents want that level of ideological purity and he doesn't actually have to compromise on much, whereas Clinton has held a variety of political positions where for various reasons she's been required to compromise. You can't be an uncompromising ideologically pure idealist and lead the State Department.

I also definitely think there's a gendered element to it, since Bernie's white male status has encouraged people to remove barriers to his success and listen to what he has to say (he's got the Vermont Democratic party eating out of his hand despite the fact that he's not even a member), while Hillary has had to fight for every inch of ground because people fundamentally do not see her as someone who belongs in politics at all. When you're battling just for a seat in the room, you're a lot more likely to find yourself compromising at some point.
posted by Sara C. at 10:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]


So's the military, but I don't have people with the words "Chairman", "Joint", or "Chiefs" in their job titles calling me for tactical advice.

That's because your representative is the Commander in Chief who's elected by that same process.
posted by Talez at 10:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


So you are saying that the taxpayers should have no say whatsoever in how millions of dollars handed over to political parties are spent?
posted by JackFlash at 10:47 AM on June 10, 2016


So by all means, make the case that this is a chemotherapy approach where the poison might do more sum total good than harm.

This is the perfect metaphor, and I think I'll be borrowing it. YES. Chemotherapy is poison. It poisons your whole body, but it poisons your cancer FASTER. You do it in the hope that the cancer dies first, not because the chemo is good for you. It's a desperate measure that we reserve for desperate times. Even more so than the fire-escape axe.

Here is your periodic reminder of why Trump is a cancer:

Threatening Cruz delegates

Threatening riots if he doesn't get the nomination.

Wants to kill the families of suspected terrorists.

"Bomb the shit out of" ISIS.

Reminisces fondly about the days when protesters were carried out of political rallies "on stretchers."

Praises Putin, who has had journalists disappeared.

Threatens to change laws (if elected) to make it easier to go after journalists

Thinks he can impose the death penalty for non-federal crimes (killing a cop)

Supports water boarding and says he would "do worse."

Not immediately disavowing David Duke.

Proposed deportations (which would have to be violent at proposed pace.)

Proposed ban on Muslims entering the country

Said he might support putting Muslims in camps like the Japanese were in during WWII

Thinks all Muslims should be forced to register with government database

Actual violence at rallies

Doesn't know what nuclear triad is

Wants to default on debt

Suggested that he would consider using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:50 AM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]


That's because your representative is the Commander in Chief who's elected by that same process.

Right, and that same process elected the people who built our system of government and who vote year after year for the budgets that include money to be spent on the process for electing the next round of people who will continue to vote year after year for the budgets that include money to be spent on the process for electing... Which brings me to:

So you are saying that the taxpayers should have no say whatsoever in how millions of dollars handed over to political parties are spent?

But they do. At any time, the cycle can be broken by people making electoral system reform a voting issue, and demanding that they pass legislation making primaries truly one person one vote democratic, or at least requiring parties to honor the candidate who gets the most delegates under penalty of law. I'm not making a normative argument that parties should get to do whatever they want, I'm just saying they currently can, and it's not like we're powerless to change it, but the undemocratic nature of primaries is barely an issue on anyone's radar, so there's very little will to change it.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:51 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm not making a normative argument that parties should get to do whatever they want.

Well, that helps because "it's their game, their rules" didn't sound like that.
posted by JackFlash at 10:55 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]




Well, that helps because "it's their game, their rules" didn't sound like that.

Me saying "it's raining outside" doesn't mean I enjoy the rain.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:57 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Because her vagina

'Vagina' is not a useful synecdoche for 'woman'

The difference is that he has a penis

'Penis' is not a useful synecdoche for 'man'

Please stop doing this
posted by beerperson at 11:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [31 favorites]


Here is your periodic reminder of why Trump is a cancer:

This list is surely missing things. I wanted to say it's missing X and Y, but those things were there...only I didn't see them on the first read. It's like there's just too much.

This dude is so awful it's almost impossible to keep track of each individual horrible detail, all of which should be stand-alone unequivocal deal-breakers.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


I think it's because Bernie Sanders is a career senator from a small backwater liberal state where his constituents want that level of ideological purity and he doesn't actually have to compromise on much

I think this statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Vermont and its politics.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Sara C. But Hillary and Bernie aren't substantially different, politically.

I disagree, and that's why I supported Sanders until he turned into a crank.

Clinton is a hawk, she will not merely continue President Nobel Peace Prize's wars, she'll expand them and start a few of her own. She really, really, likes bombing the shit out of third world countries filled with brown people. I'm sure she has reasons that seem good to her, but I disagree strongly with the endless war our presidents lead us on.

Sanders isn't a pacifist, but he at least does seem a lot more reluctant to mong war.

Clinton is a true believer in market liberalism. She's part of the kinder and gentler faction, but at core she's convinced that Wall Street is a great thing and that, at most, it needs a little bit of tinkering around the edges not any sort of major overhaul.

Sanders is fundamentally from a different viewpoint there, he's not nearly as hard left as I'd prefer, but he's at least different from Clinton in a way I consider to be very positive there.

Clinton isn't a Republican, she isn't evil or seeking harm, but in two fundamental and critical areas I do think she is radically different from Sanders and I'm more in agreement with Sanders in those areas.

There's a lot of overlap between liberal and Left, but the Venn diagram doesn't completely overlap, and the places it doesn't are important.

A couple of other areas: Sanders opposes the death penalty, Clinton wants to see it continue. Sanders is on side in the fight for $15, Clinton hemmed and hawed and eventually came around to agreeing to $12, because apparently she just can't bring herself to join up with us radical people who want a real living wage. Clinton doesn't just disagree with universal single payer, she deployed right wing lies in opposition to it (see: Clinton being a believer in market liberalism).

So I'm voting Clinton this November because of all the stuff where I do agree with her, and that list is long. But it just isn't true, from my POV anyway, that they aren't substantially different from a political standpoint.

Just on the war issue alone I'd say there's a huge gap with Sanders on the side of what is right and true and just in the world and Clinton standing with those who are deeply wrong.
posted by sotonohito at 11:23 AM on June 10, 2016 [18 favorites]


Sanders on the side of what is right and true and just in the world and Clinton standing with those who are deeply wrong.

Sanders supports the drone program. I kind of wish people would stop bringing their ideas of "purity" into political discussion because it never holds water. Also, the varying and conditional ways in which "brown people" are invoked is pretty gross.
posted by zutalors! at 11:26 AM on June 10, 2016 [39 favorites]


I feel like Obama's endorsement, and the timing, and that Sanders spoke after, bolsters my theory of how the conversation went.

Sanders, for all my concerns about his miscalculations, is emphatically not a stupid man. He's starting his pivot. I hope that he gets through to the more extreme elements of his base, because it's so fucking necessary.


After finally finding the time to watch Sanders' DC rally yesterday, I'm feeling a lot better about how this primary is wrapping up. He seemed relaxed again; he was making jokes again (I liked the Donald Trump, Scientist ones especially well). Maybe he's too stubborn but he's definitely not dumb - he knows what the big picture is here. I've also had time enough to walk my own fear and frustration down a few steps, to remember that however I feel about his campaign staff, strategy or supporters, Senator Sanders is a guy on my side and America's side as well.

Considering the reaction to the Warren endorsement, I'm also seeing the wisdom of the slow walk-down process here. People are too fired up to just put on the brakes straightaway. I saw one share of a Warren endorsement article accompanied by two and half paragraphs of [$hillary] text, which to him cancelled out Warren's whole career. The level of nefariousness I'm seeing assumed about Clinton is cartoonish, and it's gonna take a time and careful messaging to get some folks to stop seeing her as Cruella DeHille long enough to see the big picture too. I can't believe I'm about to cite words from Lindsey Graham as good advice, but here goes: "at some point, love of country has to trump hate of Hillary."

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Maybe, maybe not. Most of my friends find Clinton cynical - I tend to see her as a kind of Super Saiyan Leslie Knope. I don't think this level of political activity is going to go over her head. Seems to me that folks who love and folks who hate Clinton tend to agree that she's a savvy political operator. Whatever else folks believe about her, no one thinks she's dumb. I see the word "calculating" applied to her lot (an adjective I would consider a compliment, but I know it's often used to imply coldness as well). Well alright - suppose she really is this pantsuited supervillain, awakening every morning under a vulture down comforter on her cold onyx bed. Suppose she really does follow Elizabeth Bathory's beauty regimen (another lady ruler that folks were ever-ready to believe the worst about). Suppose Hillary really does look at her Blackberry saying "mirror mirror in my hand, show me how to seize this land." If this is the case, do folks really think the tremendous groundswell of populist politics on both sides of the aisle is going to be something she misses?
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:32 AM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


She really, really, likes bombing the shit out of third world countries filled with brown people

Clinton isn't [...] evil or seeking harm


nuance
posted by beerperson at 11:32 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


I'm curious what the consensus is these days on our intervention (under Bill Clinton) in the former Yugoslavia. It's interesting because it had nothing to do with "brown people" and nothing to do with "oil." It seems to have genuinely been a humanitarian intervention? But it was still a war. We still killed people. I'm not quite sure what the verdict of history is on that. But I think it was a formative experience for Hillary Clinton. If politicians are always "fighting the last war," I think maybe for her that has been the war she is trying to re-fight for a long time. Other wars are justified because that war was justified? Does anyone else have that perception?
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:33 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


i need to point out that the legitimacy of the political process is not a minor thing - yes, they could toss trump off the train and throw him under the bus, maybe even give him a seat behind evel knieval, but the thing is, you're going to piss off millions of people doing that - millions of armed, angry people

it's not like anyone's asking US what to do, anyway - grab the popcorn and let's watch the republicans screw themselves
posted by pyramid termite at 11:35 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


(Or maybe her "last war" is actualy Rwanda. We didn't intervene and we should have. So now she errs on the side of intervening. I guess it's probably both. But I think the verdict of history is in on Rwanda, right? Almost everyone, even mostly pacifistic people, think we should have tried to stop the genocide? So if that haunts Hillary Clinton, well, that's probably something that should haunt all of us.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:38 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]


After finally finding the time to watch Sanders' DC rally yesterday, I'm feeling a lot better about how this primary is wrapping up. He seemed relaxed again; he was making jokes again

I wouldn't be surprised if the weird tone issues near the end of his campaign were just a result of being both flat-out exhausted and also in a bit of an echo chamber - nothing like Trump's, of course, but every campaign is going to have at least a tiny bit of an echo chamber dynamic going on. And maybe now that the outcome is essentially certain he's been able to take a step back and reassess, perhaps even feel some relief, because even though he fought hard and wanted to win - hell, I'd be relieved too, to finally get to quit this hell-race.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:38 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


(But not every conflict is Rwanda, obviously, and it would be a mistake to think it is...)
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:39 AM on June 10, 2016


I literally just came here from trying to explain to someone on Facebook how search engines work.
That someone is a former TA of mine, which is sad.


Some of the smartest, coolest, and most well educated and life-experienced people i know who i look up to or just generally respect are SO SOLD on the conspiracy thing. It's to the point that i'm afraid to even come out against it because it's like, a given among a lot of my friends.

The saddest thing is it started out among the sort of conspiracy prone or slightly naive but-i-love-em-anyways people and spread to the general skeptics.

And the thing is, i was on board at first too! i was like "this looks fishy idk" but it's risen to like, benghazi levels at this point.

I seriously don't even know how to respond because the response from them will be like "fucking traitor, ok go vote out of fear since that's all that drives america now".

It's like... you guys, you're better than this, you sound like a newspaper site comment section. I feel so alienated from not even just my friends, but cool people i looked up to who i was shocked added me on facebook/etc.
posted by emptythought at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


It is pretty interesting that the first major female presidential candidate is criticized for being too hawkish/interventionist, since one of the shitty theoretical arguments against a female president was always "they'd be too soft to handle The Bad Guys effectively." I don't think anybody's making that argument about Clinton.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:42 AM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


i thought the balkans intervention was a classic case of the u s "having" to intervene because europe couldn't get its shit together

this is not a good precedent at all - now europe is having millions of refugees coming and can't seem to get any kind of agreement on how it should be handled - and it's probably too big a problem for us to fix

but europe is so used to us baling them out that they may not get their act together this time, either
posted by pyramid termite at 11:42 AM on June 10, 2016


Hillary Clinton just delivered a most excellent speech to Planned Parenthood with a strong defense of reproductive rights - I can't wait til it is online, I am working and could only half listen but what I heard was great. It was so gratifying to hear a major political candidate speak so strongly about women's issues. The audience was going wild - here's all I've found about it so far, in Cosmo of all places. I don't have time to look further right now.

When she was done, they cut to Trump at some religious values forum introduced by Ralph Reed. He started out subdued and parading his phony religious crap - and cited his commitment to total protection of life and marriage, a stark contrast to Clinton. He was just getting wound up and was bumped off the air by a shooting incident in the Dallas Love Field.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:44 AM on June 10, 2016 [12 favorites]


and rwanda? - our military just plain wasn't stationed and prepared to do anything in a timely manner - we were helpless

but anyway ...
posted by pyramid termite at 11:45 AM on June 10, 2016


I'm pretty sure the Ralph Reed forum was the same one where David Perdue showed off his psalm-quoting abilities.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hillary Clinton just delivered a most excellent speech to Planned Parenthood with a strong defense of reproductive rights - I can't wait til it is online, I am working and could only half listen but what I heard was great. It was so gratifying to hear a major political candidate speak so strongly about women's issues. The audience was going wild - here's all I've found about it so far, in Cosmo of all places. I don't have time to look further right now.

I've heard people criticize Clinton from the left for her stance on abortion (the whole 'safe legal and rare' thing), but although I don't exactly agree with it, I have absolutely zero problem with it. The end goals of her stance are the same as the end goals of mine (more freely available abortions and birth control), plus it opens the door for persuading moderately religious people in a way that I think is actually very valuable.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:53 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


Here's Hillary's Planned Parenthood speech.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


Thank you Sophie1 - I found a video version of Hillary's Planned Parenthood speech on Cspan, too. Glad to have that transcript too!
posted by madamjujujive at 12:03 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


As long as "and rare" is meant in the way Clinton has always expressed it, which is essentially "reduce structural barriers so that women's choices are less driven by concerns about money, childcare, maternity leave, lack of knowledge about or access to effective contraception, barriers to adoption, lack of support for kids and adults with congenital disabilities, etc..." rather than the way the GOP expresses it, which is more like "make abortion as hard as possible to get so it is increasingly rare while technically still legal," I think that's a pretty good position.
posted by zachlipton at 12:10 PM on June 10, 2016 [32 favorites]


I've had curiously little personal feeling of "yay a female nominee," maybe because I'm young enough that it always seemed inevitable that we'd get there someday. But... I gotta say, reading that transcript kinda got to me.

"Women should determine our own lives and futures." "He says if women want equal pay, we should just – and this is a quote – ‘do as good a job’ as men – as if we weren’t already."
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [18 favorites]


I think no matter how young or old you are you have to notice that HRC has been the only candidate to consistently mention women's rights in all of her primary speeches, win or lose.

Also I feel like maybe people are feeling some sort of "making history" fatigue after Obama. But overall no, I don't feel like a female nominee has really felt inevitable and feel like it might not have been without HRC, honestly.
posted by zutalors! at 12:17 PM on June 10, 2016 [36 favorites]


It is pretty interesting that the first major female presidential candidate is criticized for being too hawkish/interventionist

I guess in theory, female leaders may need to somehow overcompensate militarily in order to prove they are tough, or as tough as a male leader. At least, I've heard that expressed, though other than perhaps Thatcher/Falklands I'm not sure of a good example of it actually happening.
posted by Rumple at 12:20 PM on June 10, 2016


Today's Malia Obama's graduation? I'll be damned. Tomorrow marks twenty years since my own high school graduation. Much hasn't changed, in that Hillary gets dragged by the right and the right-leaning wing of the press just as hard as she did back then. But you know what *has* changed? In a few months, this daughter of the first black President gets to cast her first ballot, and she gets the choice of voting for a female president.

What a time to be alive.
posted by palomar at 12:30 PM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]




THIS is the Hillary Clinton I've been waiting for.

I honestly feel like so much of what we / the public think we know about HRC is triangulation, by the relentless drumbeat of investigations. At the same time, especially as FLOTUS and as Sec of State, she had to walk the narrow line (that, of course, women have to walk anyways) to please everyone while trying to remain true to her own values.

I don't feel like many people have gotten a good idea of what her own values are. I think we're about to find out, and I'm really, really psyched for that.
posted by Dashy at 12:36 PM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]


Some replies from Matt Cutts about that ridiculous "search engine manipulation" video.
posted by thefoxgod at 12:37 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've heard people criticize Clinton from the left for her stance on abortion (the whole 'safe legal and rare' thing), but although I don't exactly agree with it, I have absolutely zero problem with it. The end goals of her stance are the same as the end goals of mine (more freely available abortions and birth control), plus it opens the door for persuading moderately religious people in a way that I think is actually very valuable.

I got into it with a guy in FB comments on a Planned Parenthood post, he had worked himself into a righteous lather about how horrible PP is because they endorsed Hillary instead of Bernie, and Bernie clearly gives more of a shit about reproductive rights because Hillary lets her "extreme religious views" color her stance on abortion. (This guy's words, not mine.) The "safe, legal, and rare" thing, which I also interpret to mean that education and access to contraception are integral, is being interpreted by many on the extreme left to be an underhanded stigmatization not only of abortion procedures but also the women who seek out abortions.

To me this just reads as another smear tactic from the left. And I find it disgusting.
posted by palomar at 12:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]


showbiz_liz, I've told this before - I'm an "old" and when I went to get birth control it was illegal for single women - you were supposed to have your husband's permission. I'm past child-bearing age, but it has distressed me to no end to watch us walk back hard-fought rights, it is very real to me, I had to sneak, connive and break the law to get birth control. And I was one of the lucky ones. I have friends whose lives were changed by single motherhood from unplanned children in an age where that was more difficult and more stigmatized than today; friends who raised them alone, friends who wrenchingly gave them up for adoption , friends who had scary, unsafe backroom abortions. I just re-watched that video and it brought me to tears to hear a strong woman in power give these basic rights voice, frame them in a larger perspective. Will she be able to effect all those changes? Maybe not, but she will make progress and damn, it feels good to hear them put on the table and aired like that. It's impressive that was her first major speech.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [48 favorites]


I don't feel like many people have gotten a good idea of what her own values are. I think we're about to find out, and I'm really, really psyched for that.

Right?? I feel like, in many ways, Hillary was on the defensive in 2008, and again during this year's primary. Which is one reason why I'm pretty bothered by this idea that she's got to "sprint leftward" to meet Bernie supporters (of which I am one!!) all of a sudden. As if Hillary's just this musty establishment figure without an agenda of her own, and all she can do is either pander leftward or pander rightward.

I want to know what Hillary wants. Especially after all the news stories about how she's a super-genius wonk who knows everything about politics better than everyone else does. I want her to convince me that she's smarter than I am and knows more than I do and thinks she's got a good idea of how to make the world better despite half of America hating her guts.

She's finally clear of the Dems who want to see her match Obama or Bernie on policy, and free to be the Dem whose policy matters. That's really damn exciting, especially since the last week has made it blatantly clear that she has a whole lot to say.
posted by rorgy at 12:43 PM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election, convinced that the majority agrees with them and The Man is holding us all back. The truth is the Far Left is small.

Parties need to build and work to spread their message. This "work" is the answer many don't want to seem to hear. By all means, let's build a Left party. But let's not be delusional and think that's what everyone wants right now. "But, Sanders!" is not a convincing argument. There were many reasons he got as many votes as he did, not to do with ideology.
posted by bongo_x at 12:45 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think people make too much of the "safe legal and rare" thing, especially because it's something she's shifted her language on, but to say that this is a smear tactic and not something that REALLY PISSED OFF people who care about reproductive rights at the time is a definite misremembering of history.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:45 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm also interested to know how much of the "Far Left" is interested in advocating a set of policy and principle goals, and how much of it is just "I don't like Hillary Clinton." Something else we'll figure out soon, I guess.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:47 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


(not that douchebags who use this to bad mouth Clinton when they've never cared about abortion rights before aren't totally assholes)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:47 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm also interested to know how much of the "Far Left" is interested in advocating a set of policy and principle goals, and how much of it is just "I don't like Hillary Clinton." Something else we'll figure out soon, I guess.

That's the beauty of it. If Clinton does a good job towards reforming the structural issues affecting our country, then that far left will be mollified, or at least be drowned out by the content. If not, then she'd be the perfect heel for the coming leftist equivalent to the Tea Party in the WWE SmackDown that is modern American politics.

What embittered Sanderistas need to realize is that you have to kill your darlings and put away your political idols. A Clinton presidency could benefit them more than they imagine.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:53 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is a good piece on intersectionality and supporting Hillary Clinton. It reads in part:

However, Sanders's success has also allowed people not to have to grapple with the impact of sexism on the national body politic, because they use support for Sanders's progressive politics as evidence that they aren't sexist.

It's one thing to say that you would elect the "right" woman candidate, and another to actually do it. It's one thing to claim that you would elect the "right" black candidate, and another thing to actually have done it...

Her womanhood matters. I can vote for Hillary and express desire to see a woman lead, without throwing on my cape for the empire. But I also won't throw on my cape for any brand of progressivism that skips over sexism in its wake. We are no more postfeminist than we are postracial. Racism and capitalism are not more pressing to me than the problem of patriarchy. As a black woman who grew up working-class, I don't get to leave any issue on the table. They are all urgent as fuck.

...Dismantling white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are the only ways people in my community will ever have anything akin to freedom. And any Bernie Bros, be they black or white, who think going hard at racism and capitalism makes them more progressive than those of us who care about electing a woman, need to procure a better analysis of identity politics. Yes, identity politics matter to me. As Netflix says, I like "strong female leads." But if my support for HRC is reduced to a simple propagation of identity politics, then the same reductive analysis applies to those men who insist on electing yet another (white) man to the presidency. Now, certainly, white liberal feminism has never been the pathway to black women's liberation, but politics like Sanders's that elevate anticapitalism to a prime position without sufficient attention to patriarchy and white supremacy do not serve black women well either. Instead, it creates a world that is better for white men (as if they need it) and men of color, while leaving women behind.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 12:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election, convinced that the majority agrees with them and The Man is holding us all back. The truth is the Far Left is small.

I'm definitely getting this vibe from the Sanders FB group I'm in (which took a turn for the extreme a few months back) - there's an idea that it's inconceivable that more people could have voted for Clinton, therefore her lead must be due to fraud. It really sucks to see this, because as far as I can tell, the left has actually never had a better chance in recent history to implement its goals at a national level.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


She's finally clear of the Dems who want to see her match Obama or Bernie on policy, and free to be the Dem whose policy matters. That's really damn exciting, especially since the last week has made it blatantly clear that she has a whole lot to say..

I'm pretty psyched too, and it's going to be amazing to see her let loose against such an odious candidate as Trump.

Her history - both related to her gender and to her previous work experience - is of someone who has had to make a lot of compromises in the course of her life. That doesn't bother me, since I think that this is exactly the kind of job that means listening to lots of voices and trying to craft a solution where people aren't agreeing with each other. But it makes me so frustrated that so many people see this as evidence that she doesn't have any truly-held progressive beliefs of her own, which I think can't possibly be further from the truth.

There's this sort of received truth out there that Hillary Clinton is a power-hungry manipulator who, if she believes anything at all, is in heart a secret conservative. (Unless the rumors are coming from the right, in which case she's in secret league with Planned Parenthood to indoctrinate all young women into a society of mandatory lesbianism.) And unfortunately, there's no way to counter that to people determined to see the worst of her. If you point to progressive elements in her proposed platform...well, she doesn't actually believe any of that. It's just a cynical attempt to appeal to the Sanders wing, or something.

My hope is that more people see the side of Clinton that she showed in today's speech and look more closely to discover that this is the person with strong progressive beliefs that she's been all along.
posted by Salieri at 12:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


From the Cosmopolitan article, QFT: Can we be honest about the fact that ride-or-die approaches to supporting our male partners often cost us way more than it costs them?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:59 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


there's an idea that it's inconceivable that more people could have voted for Clinton, therefore her lead must be due to fraud

That's the prevailing attitude in the online Sanders places I've seen, too. Every state where Clinton wins is the result of one or more of the following:

1) Rigged process.
2) Voter fraud.
3) Media conspiracy.
4) Low information Southern voters (read: lots of African Americans).

It's gross. Obviously these types are a minority but they're sadly a very vocal one.
posted by Justinian at 1:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


Which is obviously a way of dismissing her and her achievements. It may be a total coincidence that this is the essence of sexism, but I'm thinking not.
posted by msalt at 1:03 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


Eh - the Left has always kind of taken the attitude that “we really know what America wants”. Heck, that was the epitome of Sanders’ campaign, and the whole idea of the “revolution”. I think it’s fair to say that that’s also a core of what the hard right -in the form of the Tea Party- also believes, and it wasn’t too long ago that Nixon talked about the “silent majority”. Heck, Trump is talking about being backed by that same silent majority. Sexism is surely in the mix, but passion is a hell of a drug.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:09 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is anyone else considering ghosting on their parents until the election is over? I just got a horrible call from my mother where she just did not understand why anyone would want to go to the GOP Convention and not be there to party for the Donald. Because Cleveland is going to be a nonstop party! Full of laughs and no riots at all!
posted by corb at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]


how much of the "Far Left" is interested in advocating a set of policy and principle goals

I can't help but feel that Proudhon would have been as critical of "Progressive Democrats" as of Neoliberals.

I mean, unless I'm mis-remembering my theory an uncompromising Bakuninite anarcho-syndicalist, e.g., would presumably not bother to vote at all because a truly democratic state is impossible and instead results in subjection by the "minority allegedly representing it but actually governing it." Instead they would try to affect social revolution directly through labor action, as in the First International.

Sadly, the US no longer has much of a far left, what remains fails to reject the "principle of authority" the anarchists so vociferously criticized, and the power of its/our collective labor activism has had the rug pulled out from under it for over a generation.

This is well-trodden territory, but I don't know how you'd even define "far left" in a country where Obama==Socialist for nearly half the electorate.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:11 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Is anyone else considering ghosting on their parents until the election is over?

No way I ask my parents about Trump within two minutes of every conversation because it makes them squirm and how! I am a very bad son. But I can't help myself.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


I am spending as little time as possible with my father and brother until after November.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:16 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election
The left-right axis in American Politics seems to be turning into a loop when members of the "Far Left" are making noises that sound very "Far Right". But then, labels don't work and they haven't since I realized that Communist Dictatorships were just Fascist Dictatorships with a Socialist cover story.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:16 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is anyone else considering ghosting on their parents until the election is over?

Not me, but as much as my parents dislike Hillary Clinton they are sane people and will not vote for Trump. So far JUSTINIAN 2016: MAKE BYZANTIUM GREAT AGAIN is up to 4 write in votes. 3 in California and 1 in Washington State. Hopefully I will not get any votes in swing states.
posted by Justinian at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


My mom has a "Hillary for Prison" bumper sticker.

I don't talk politics with her AT ALL.

Or ride in her car.
posted by hilaryjade at 1:22 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


...politics like Sanders's that elevate anticapitalism to a prime position without sufficient attention to patriarchy and white supremacy do not serve black women well either. Instead, it creates a world that is better for white men (as if they need it) and men of color, while leaving women behind.

So apparently "anti-capitalism" is a fuzzy word if my googling is anything to go by, but would the vision of the future Sanders was advocating generally be considered anti-capitalist? It's been my understanding that functional capitalism, by definition, has to have plenty of regulation to force competition and reinforce human rights, and that we learned that lesson around the Rockefeller era, and so I'd always read anti-capitalism to more or less describe advocating a move away from the basic principles of money-for-work and private ownership in general. But it's possible I'm just uninformed?
posted by Phyltre at 1:22 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's funny when I read MeFi Facebook Feed reports and then see people on mine complain about parents just don't understand when they voted for Sanders instead of Clinton. Perhaps we are all in social media bubbles of our own choosing.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:23 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I went shopping at Target today (I double-dip their "Cartwheel" electronic coupons with paper coupons to buy selected items real cheap) and in the magazine section, there was a $14.95 TIME Magazine Special Edition: "Donald Trump: Rise of a Rule Breaker". Well, there's another so-called journalistic institution dead. Hey, TIME: here's some truth in labeling: "Donald Trump: Rise of a LAW Breaker".

And I have no living parents, so they're already 'ghosted', but I suspect Drumpf is exactly the kind of candidate my father was always looking for, so I'm glad he didn't live to see this.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


No way I ask my parents about Trump within two minutes of every conversation because it makes them squirm and how! I am a very bad son. But I can't help myself.

My parents have voted reliably Republican (besides 2012 when my mom decided she couldn't vote for a mormon), and I'm happily surprised that they've been going out of their way to reassure me they don't like Trump and won't vote for him no matter what.
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:28 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is anyone else considering ghosting on their parents until the election is over?

Nah, my Dad is so stoked to vote for Gary Johnson. While I don't have much enthusiasm for Libertarianism, I'm proud of my Dad for rejecting the Republican party for its bigotry and childishness over these last few years. The gay marriage issue and the Iraq war were the cracks the crumbled the iceberg for him.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:31 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


So apparently "anti-capitalism" is a fuzzy word if my googling is anything to go by, but would the vision of the future Sanders was advocating generally be considered anti-capitalist?

Honestly at this point the furthest to the left that even the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party can get to these days is simply New Deal economic policies that were invented seventy years ago. Policies that saved capitalism from the threat of a communist revolution. Reformism that real socialists, never mind communists, lash out as insubstantial crumbs to the proletariat. Policies that are mild compared to what actual European social democrats (and maybe even their right-wing Christian democrat counterparts) advocate for. But by American standards, they're anti-capitalist, because our national religion is the red scare.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:33 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election

Some wag on Twitter calls them the Herbal Tea Party.

I am distressed about the purity tests that are getting harder and harder to pass. Now it's Elizabeth Warren, joining the ranks of Barney Frank, John Lewis, Gloria Steinem, Dolores Huerta, Barrack Obama, and who all else. People who demand adherence to the one true truth from any perspective frighten me greatly.
posted by madamjujujive at 1:34 PM on June 10, 2016 [31 favorites]


It's funny when I read MeFi Facebook Feed reports and then see people on mine complain about parents just don't understand when they voted for Sanders instead of Clinton. Perhaps we are all in social media bubbles of our own choosing.

In my particular case anyway, I think it more reflects the bubble I grew up in. Both sides of my family have always been liberal (and on one side, often radically so), and I also gravitated toward more liberal friends in high school (I was lucky to have that option, growing up in a large and diverse though southern city). I haven't purged any conservatives from my social media - I just never knew many of them well enough to have considered adding them in the first place.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I guess I'm lucky. I had a long conversation with my mom about Clinton yesterday. She started off as solidly supporting Sanders, then gradually moved toward supporting Clinton as primary season continued, especially post-Super Tuesday. Her experience during the primaries has a lot of parallels to my own.
posted by defenestration at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


madamjujujive: "Some wag on Twitter calls them the Herbal Tea Party."

I've heard Kombucha Tea Party also.
posted by mhum at 1:39 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election

Depends on who you mean by 'Far Left'. I think it's been argued ad nauseum that the "Bernie or Bust" and "Actual leftist" circles overlap a bit but are far from equivalent.

And that's because...

Eh - the Left has always kind of taken the attitude that “we really know what America wants”.

Wrong. We really know what America NEEDS. We have no illusions that most Americans will think that the medicine tastes sweet.
posted by delfin at 1:40 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I feel like the Far Left is becoming like the Tea Party in this election, convinced that the majority agrees with them and The Man is holding us all back. The truth is the Far Left is small.


I hate to admit this is true, but it really does seem this way. My facebook has gone further and further in to la la land of conspiracy theories, bern-or-bust people, and bizarre anti-hilary shitposts(which are just as often from bernie bros as 40 year old women). The extra depressing part is that a lot of the shitposting isn't coming from bernie bros, but just generally lefty people with a pretty diverse split of age/race/gender/demographic/etc.

A couple months ago it was a low key bernie meme here and there, now it's all out anarchy and the content could have been stolen from some right wing facebook group.

I'm really interested to see if this rage holds up or peters out. It's a completely different beast than the simmering rage that "fuck yea obama!" turned in to when the young opinion sort of shifted to "obama isn't doing shit!".
posted by emptythought at 1:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Nah, my Dad is so stoked to vote for Gary Johnson. While I don't have much enthusiasm for Libertarianism, I'm proud of my Dad for rejecting the Republican party for its bigotry and childishness over these last few years. The gay marriage issue and the Iraq war were the cracks the crumbled the iceberg for him.

To be fair I'm a social democrat and I agree with Gary Johnson on (to quote Sam B) "every other thing".
posted by Talez at 1:43 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


When I said I wanted a left wing Tea Party equivalent I meant more in terms of making serious primacy challenges to terrify right leaning Democrats into supporting our agenda, not in terms of being batshit insane.
posted by sotonohito at 1:50 PM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]


Is anyone else considering ghosting on their parents until the election is over?

My mom supported HRC in the 2008 primaries, and it took her a while to come around to Obama, but she voted for him twice.

My dad is a seventy-two year old white man without a college degree, veteran, gun owner, former NRA member, and, frankly, more than a little racist (I don't know if he voted for Obama, and I'm not asking). He hates Trump and is perfectly happy to vote for Clinton. I'm hoping that having two daughters is partly behind that. It also gives me hope that there are more white men like him, especially in purple states like PA.
posted by gladly at 1:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


When I said I wanted a left wing Tea Party equivalent I meant more in terms of making serious primacy challenges to terrify right leaning Democrats into supporting our agenda, not in terms of being batshit insane.

I'm pretty sure that's what the right wing was thinking at the time as well. I don't think you get one without the other.
posted by chimaera at 1:54 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


When I said I wanted a left wing Tea Party equivalent I meant more in terms of making serious primacy challenges to terrify right leaning Democrats into supporting our agenda, not in terms of being batshit insane.

Sadly, I think the latter needs to be present in order to engender the former. The party leadership thinks that disgruntlement from vocal segments of the base is normal, and that it will all be smoothed out after their favored candidate is elected. They don't take dissent seriously because they assume people will vote for them because the Republicans are worse. It's exactly the same situation, flipped, as it was for evangelicals in the GOP. They won't take things seriously until they get scared. For all of the bitterness this year, I don't think the Sanders crowd truly frightens them.

Of course, the Tea Party was assisted by astroturfing billionaires. I don't think there's a Koch Bros. (or a Soros) for the further-left faction of the Democratic Party.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Jeremy Diamond at CNN: “Trump: ‘No one should be judged by their race or their color’”

Jim Newell at Slate: “Donald Trump Thinks He Can Win California (He Can’t)” (Yes, it’s a hot take on a tweet. I don’t care. Please, please, please.)
posted by Going To Maine at 2:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


madamjujujive: "Some wag on Twitter calls them the Herbal Tea Party."

I've heard Kombucha Tea Party also.


let's make Whiskey Rebellion a real name, c'mon guys
posted by Apocryphon at 2:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Of course, the Tea Party was assisted by astroturfing billionaires. I don't think there's a Koch Bros. (or a Soros) for the further-left faction of the Democratic Party.

Ok fine, I'll do it. I am gonna need y'all to send me all your money though because I'm not quite a billionaire yet...
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:01 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


We could always counter Tea Party with that other popular caffeinated beverage, coffee. Although "Starbucks Party" is too corporate and consumerist, and by their nature the local places don't have a collective name by which we could refer to them.

Perhaps we could label them by that cool hip coffee-making technique they all seem to advertise and talk about endlessly? Yes, that sounds perfect. We shall call these people the Drips.
posted by rorgy at 2:04 PM on June 10, 2016


Jeremy Diamond at CNN: “Trump: ‘No one should be judged by their race or their color’”
CNN... same parent company as TIME which published its glowing Donald Trump $14.95 Special Edition.

Now that Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan have killed Gawker, we can expect nothing but positive coverage of Donald Trump from now on, because the media companies want to continue in business.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:06 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nah, the point is not soft drinks but to evoke historical legacy in order to appear to be more patriotic and legitimate than the opposition. It's a cheap trick that the right always uses and blows my mind why the left never tries to counter. It's just having a name that evokes both history and soft drinks makes it sound like they're in the same category. Plus whiskey is a totally hardcore liquor guys unlike tea which is drank by ~*Englishmen*~
posted by Apocryphon at 2:08 PM on June 10, 2016


Jeremy Diamond at CNN: “Trump: ‘No one should be judged by their race or their color’”
CNN... same parent company as TIME which published its glowing Donald Trump $14.95 Special Edition.

This is the first sentence of the article: “Donald Trump, who ignited an uproar by attacking a judge as biased on the basis of his Mexican heritage, said Friday in a speech to evangelical voters that he believes ‘no one should be judged by their race or their color.’”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:09 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


That first sentence sounds much more "fair" and supportive of Trump than anything coming out the "free press" should be, as opposed to the very accusatory report on Hillary by ABC quoted by Drinky Die.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:15 PM on June 10, 2016


Really? It reads to me like they're calling him on his bullshit before they even get around to saying what the bullshit is.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:17 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Much more factual:
“Donald Trump, who attacked a judge in a lawsuit against him as biased on the basis of his Mexican heritage, used the words ‘no one should be judged by their race or their color’ in a speech to a political organization that claims to be evangelically based.”
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:19 PM on June 10, 2016


Going down a hole of CNN sentence exegesis is inherently a bit silly, but that new construction reads to me as more muddled: “used the words” seems weirdly oblique instead of “said”, and describing the organization as one that “claims to be evangelically based” confuses things by attacking the credibility of the organization. If our theme is that Trump is being hypocritical, keep the focus on him.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:31 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: sentence exegesis is inherently a bit silly
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:36 PM on June 10, 2016 [14 favorites]


GtM is right, that rewritten sentence is awkward and muddled. There was nothing wrong with CNN's original opening. It makes the point quite clearly.
posted by Justinian at 2:38 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Founder of a Minuteman Border Group Is Convicted of Child Molestation

Remember kids: Mexicans and trans people are truly the ones to be feared!
posted by Talez at 2:44 PM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


A founder of the now-disbanded Minuteman border patrol group has been convicted in Arizona of molesting a 5-year-old girl, bringing to an end a case that gained the attention of the nation’s highest court after he tried to cross-examine the young victim.

I can't do it any more

Time to burn it all down
posted by Existential Dread at 2:49 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Disclaimer: I have been a professional writer of non-fiction (but not in the last 4 years) and my editors have criticized me for being "awkward and muddled".

How about this:
‘no one should be judged by their race or their color’
That's perfectly consistent with Trump's claim that the Judge is treating him unfairly because Trump is a White Anglo American.

And Talez, Transference is one of the commonest practices of Cis White Males. My "people" are the worst... and Donald Trump is Our Candidate.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:49 PM on June 10, 2016




I encountered this kind of magical thinking from some Trump supporters months ago. They sincerely believe that he doesn't believe the things he says - that he's just saying them to get elected. On the other hand, they don't like Clinton because she's a liar.

We can't see inside people's hearts. All we have to go on is what they say and what they do. Based exclusively on what he says and what he does, Trump is a nightmare person who is entirely unfit to govern.

Magical thinking, man. It fucks us all up.

posted by Joey Michaels at 2:52 PM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]


The last several weeks I have been musing over all the various things that had to line up to get a female candidate with a good shot at the presidency:

I think we can all agree that she had to run as a Democrat.

She had to be better informed and more experienced than any man running because women always have to be better than their male counterparts to get the job. A lot of years of training went into building Hilary Clinton, presidential nominee, and that meant she had to start young AND have an excellent brain with the unflagging will to succeed.

Since it took so many years, she had to retain her health. I bring this up because I at 58 years old could never do what she does-- my knees couldn't take it. I can no longer stand for 3 hours nor could I walk for hours on end. And forget about skipping my nap! How does she do it? It astonishes me that she is in such great shape.

Of course she also had to keep a sharp brain with the ability to memorize many facts and spit them out without hesitation or repetition. I forget words sometimes or the name of actors or book titles-- it isn't a serious problem but if I was running for president it is the kind of thing that would be pounced on as a weakness or sign that I have early Alzheimers ( don't worry, I don't.)

She had to have the ability to raise vast sums of money and here is where Bill and the Clinton Foundation are an asset. I don't know this as a fact but I sense it is probably more difficult for female candidates to raise large sums on their own because the wealthiest donors are mostly men. In order to raise a billion dollars for her campaign she has to be known by wealthy people and be trusted by them.

Finally, not only does she have to want to be President but her spouse and her children have to want it as well. You could say that about any candidate but again I think men have a distinct advantage here as wives are more likely to be supportive and agree to campaign on their husband's behalf. I wonder how many wives and mothers have had to sideline their political aspirations because they didn't have the full support of their family.

There are probably other things that came into play but these are the ones that spring to mind: Democratic leanings, experience, good health, sharp mind, access to big money, and family support.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:05 PM on June 10, 2016 [33 favorites]


With evangelicals, Trump plays it safe:
Trump also played to the crowd, promising to defend religious freedom..."We will defend Christian Americans," Trump said, before repeating himself for emphasis. "Christian Americans."
posted by kirkaracha at 3:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm a bit late on the response here, Sara C, but I agree completely.
posted by biogeo at 3:30 PM on June 10, 2016


> I think we can all agree that she had to run as a Democrat.

You really think that's true? I'm British and have no real sense of the lay of the land on this issue in the US. But as a former little boy who once asked his mum if a man could be prime minister, I have as an adult come to admire Thatcher for not just overcoming the gender barrier in the party that she did but also the class barrier.
posted by vbfg at 3:40 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


> I think we can all agree that she had to run as a Democrat.

You really think that's true?

I think that before Clinton in 2008 that was true.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, the limited popularity of Sarah Palin in 2008 shows that the first Woman President didn't have to be a Democrat; just be a lot smarter than Sarah Palin. At least she's smart enough to know to quit while she's ahead, take the money and run.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:48 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Couple comments deleted; let's not take a detour into pedophilia demographics.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:50 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can see a US counterpart to Thatcher if certain conditions had arisen that did not, in fact, arise.

Certainly if the Republicans had gotten the memo in 2012 that their base is dying off and they need to revitalize their brand and bring in basically any non-white or non-male demographic.

I think Sarah Palin in 2008 ruined any chance of a female Republican nominee without a significant ideological shift among the party, since it turned out that people really did not buy the "I'm just a woman trying to have it all AND ALSO A RABID FACIST" thing at all. People hated Palin, to the extent that she likely lost the election for McCain.

They would need a Republican Clinton. Someone perceived as a centrist, savvy, a compromiser, highly qualified on paper, etc. A female Marco Rubio, basically. And we saw in this primary season that the Republican base is not interested in that type of candidate at all.

Then again they clearly are having trouble getting any candidate liked by their base who is also electable by the general public. So come back in 2017 to see how any of this turns out, I guess.
posted by Sara C. at 3:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think Sarah Palin in 2008 ruined any chance of a female Republican nominee without a significant ideological shift among the party, since it turned out that people really did not buy the “I’m just a woman trying to have it all AND ALSO A RABID FACIST” thing at all. People hated Palin, to the extent that she likely lost the election for McCain.

Susana Martinez is the governor of New Mexico, chair of the Republican Governors Association, and has remained pretty cagey on Trump. Her future is bright.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Back when people used to cross party lines a bit more, before the Republican Party started getting hyper-crazy, I would have said it'd be more likely for a moderate Republican woman to get elected. But nowadays moderate Republicans are basically not allowed to exist on the national stage. I remember, back when Sarah Palin happened, there was an article saying that she was basically chosen because she was the only high-level Republican woman they could find at the time who didn't break with the party line on abortion.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:59 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


You really think that's true? I'm British and have no real sense of the lay of the land on this issue in the US. But as a former little boy who once asked his mum if a man could be prime minister, I have as an adult come to admire Thatcher for not just overcoming the gender barrier in the party that she did but also the class barrier.

several politicians at the time came from lower / middle class backgrounds, got scholarships to oxford (in particular) and then became politicians. so she's not that unusual in breaking the "class barrier". ted heath, for example, was son of a carpenter and maid.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:01 PM on June 10, 2016


I'm in this weird place where I just want to see Trump humiliated. Fucking a pig, crying in public, whatever. It's not enough for him to lose. I guess I'm not entirely a kind person.
posted by angrycat at 4:04 PM on June 10, 2016 [30 favorites]


Yeah, but in a party where that was an exception to the rule to be both was something.
posted by vbfg at 4:05 PM on June 10, 2016


The "safe, legal, and rare" thing, which I also interpret to mean that education and access to contraception are integral, is being interpreted by many on the extreme left to be an underhanded stigmatization not only of abortion procedures but also the women who seek out abortions.

This is so, so ludicrous. The implication of "safe, legal, and rare" has always been "if we provide education and contraception we won't have anywhere near the number of unwanted pregnancies." The anti-abortion movement was always about punishing wayward women who'd rather terminate a pregnancy than seek their natural roles as baby-making machines As God Intended.

To say Hillary is some crypto-fundie -- the woman who went against her own husband's White House to give the "women's rights are human rights" speech -- is not just stupid, it's a willful smear.

Meanwhile, it took Bernie until January to even say anything about repealing the Hyde Amendment. Certainly Bernie would have been in line with the rest of the left on reproductive rights. But don't tell me he is even on the same level as Hillary when it comes to it. He went to some rallies, but we still quote her UN speech today.
posted by dw at 4:30 PM on June 10, 2016 [39 favorites]


I think it's easier to elect leaders who don't fit the typical wealthy, connected white (or ethnic majority) demo in parliamentary systems. My guess is that our leadership pipeline is so constricted because you have to have a lot of connections and privilege even to get a seat in the lower house.

My MP when I lived in Ontario had a district roughly the same size as my alderman (city councillor) here in Chicago. Ordinary middle-class people can and do successfully run for national office in other countries, whereas here you have to have tons of money in order to run for anything which requires the kind of networking and political involvement that is not really accessible to most people, especially if they are disadvantaged in other ways.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:32 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


My MP when I lived in Ontario had a district roughly the same size as my alderman (city councillor) here in Chicago.

My state assembly representative has a district comparable to a megalopolis city council district's. There are more people in California than in all of Canada. Part of the "needing to be connected" thing is the difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential system, but it's more a function of size.
posted by chimaera at 4:36 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


The implication of "safe, legal, and rare" has always been "if we provide education and contraception we won't have anywhere near the number of unwanted pregnancies."

If anyone could source this I'd really appreciate it, 'cause I imagine I'm gonna have to shove said sources in front of some eyeballs real soon.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:38 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


To say Hillary is some crypto-fundie -- the woman who went against her own husband's White House to give the "women's rights are human rights" speech -- is not just stupid, it's a willful smear.

My mom was actually part of the Indian delegation to the Beijing Women's Conference and got to hear Hillary deliver that speech in person. It's one of my mom's favorite memories and probably why I've always had a favorable impression of Hillary Clinton.
posted by peacheater at 4:39 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


Remember kids: Mexicans and trans people are truly the ones to be feared!

People Who Bother You in Bathrooms

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.


also this...
If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support... But to read the papers in the last two days is to imagine that we didn't just spend a year witnessing the growth of a massive grassroots movement fueled by loathing of the party establishment.
altho ymmv: "I suspect that where we differ is in our faith in the ability of the current system and actors within it to address problems..." viz. This is How We Unify the Party

cf. left­ist polit­ics has become cul­tural polit­ics: "racism and sex­ism are prob­lems today. But I do not like the cul­tur­al­isa­tion of racism, where the prob­lem becomes one of tol­er­ance. If you read speeches by Mar­tin Luther King, and search for the world tol­er­ance, you'll find that it is prac­tic­ally absent. He did not per­ceive racism in terms of tol­er­ance, but in terms of eco­nom­ics and polit­ics... The prob­lem is that they are sys­tem­at­ic­ally mar­gin­al­ised because of their eco­nomic situ­ation."

so anyway to the extent that clinton is the centrist (market-oriented)* neoliberal hawk in this campaign and people would like her to move left and make her accountable (which she invites), a good way to do so i think is to hold her to specific (progressive) policy proposals like the roosevelt institute's recently released New Report on Taming Corporate and Financial Power (pdf) and Rewrite the Racial Rules: Building an Inclusive American Economy (pdf):
Rewriting the Racial Rules: Building an Inclusive American Economy argues that, in order to understand racial and economic inequality among black Americans, we must acknowledge the racial rules that undergird our economy and society. Those rules—laws, policies, institutions, regulations, and normative practices—are the driving force behind the patently unequal life chances and opportunities for too many individuals.

In this report, Andrea Flynn, Dorian Warren, Felicia Wong, and Susan Holmberg examine the racial rules across six different dimensions: income, wealth, education, criminal justice, health, and democratic participation. Ultimately, we show why the rules structuring our economy matter for the well-being of black Americans. And, against the backdrop of stark racial economic inequality dating back centuries, we make the case for pushing past both explicit and implicit exclusions, as well as ostensible race-neutrality...

Untamed: How to Check Corporate, Financial, and Monopoly Power outlines a policy agenda designed to rewrite the rules that shape the corporate and financial sectors and improve implementation and enforcement of existing regulations.

The policies we propose specifically address rules that have distorted private sector behavior and provided benefits to multinational corporations and rich individuals at the expense of average workers and the economy. If taxed and regulated properly, big business, banks, and wealth-holders can contribute to broadly shared prosperity. But tailoring the rules to serve their interests—in essence, leaving these powerful forces untamed—promotes rent-seeking and greater inequality and leads to weaker long-term growth and a less productive economy...

[T]he next president has an opportunity to use the 2016 election as a mandate for economic progress and a rebuke to four decades of trickle-down economics. Our rules-focused agenda is not meant to stand alone; it is designed to complement traditional progressive agendas that advocate for increased investment in public goods and social insurance, expanded labor rights, and anti-discrimination policies. However, we believe any successful progressive economic agenda must include some mix of the policies detailed in this report.
to wit: "The surprising support for Sanders is not all due to surprising leftism. However, it is additional evidence (as if any were needed) that the views of ordinary people in the USA on bread and butter issues are well to the left of those which members of the elite imagine ordinary people have."

---
*assuming she appoints larry fink to treasury (or larry summers returns?)
posted by kliuless at 4:44 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


> I think we can all agree that she had to run as a Democrat.

You really think that's true?


England has a somewhat long-running tradition of women rulers.

In America, the traditionalism and conservative politics are very closely intertwined so that there's a strong "women should be concerned with family and home. It's no coincidence that Republicans were opposed to feminism and ERA. So I really don't think the Republicans at any time would accept a women as a presidential nominee.
posted by happyroach at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Size is a big part of it, absolutely. And a House with 4350 reps would be... unwieldy.

But we do need to deal with the fact that our system for picking leaders seems to filter out people who are not very rich straight white men to a greater degree than most comparable nations do.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:50 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


We could always counter Tea Party with that other popular caffeinated beverage, coffee.

The Coffee Party has been around for years, although I'm not sure what they are doing these days.
posted by bongo_x at 4:54 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't picture Mitt "Binders of Women" Romney pulling the lever to elect a female President even if she was a Republican. None of the Republican leaders, in fact. I can't see a woman making it through the nomination process no matter how terrific she is while the Republican base is white male voters.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:56 PM on June 10, 2016


The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

See my earlier comment about how the Left really believes that they are the majority.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:58 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


I can't picture Mitt "Binders of Women" Romney pulling the lever to elect a female President even if she was a Republican. None of the Republican leaders, in fact. I can't see a woman making it through the nomination process no matter how terrific she is while the Republican base is white male vote.

Maybe he won't be voting then because he said this today.

Mitt Romney slammed Donald Trump over and over again Friday, saying he was “disturbed” by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and doesn’t “want to see trickle down racism.”
Romney made the comments during an interview in Park City, Utah, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. When Blitzer asked Romney — who won Trump’s endorsement during his own presidential bid in 2012 — about this year’s election, he said flatly he would not support the New York businessman’s bid.
“I simply can’t put my name down as someone who voted for principles that suggest racism, or xenophobia, misogyny, bigotry, whose been vulgar time and time again,” Romney said, later adding “I don’t want to see trickle down racism.”

posted by Jalliah at 5:02 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


I don't think Republicans would have any big problem with a female candidate as long as she met the litmus tests and wasn't obviously ignorant like Sarah Palin.

Social conservatives may believe that a woman should submit to her husband and that she shouldn't be a church leader, but they're generally ok with women being leaders in the public sphere as long as they're not, y'know, feminazis.

Exhibit A: Phyllis Schlafly.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:04 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh oops, I missed the part where Romney said he would just write in a candidate....
posted by Jalliah at 5:05 PM on June 10, 2016


it is fundamentally undemocratic to use rule-bending to disenfranchise the millions of people who voted for him.

I completely agree with this, but dumping Trump at the convention makes some strategic sense. Not just because he's fucking awful, but from the perspective that you'd rather the convention implode and not win the Presidency this term because you refused to nominate a racist, than nominate the racist and have a generation of non-White USAmericans pin you guys down as the party that nominated Donald-Fucking-Trump. The long-term strategy is anti-democratic, but it might be the only thing that preserves them.

Or maybe her "last war" is actualy Rwanda. We didn't intervene and we should have. So now she errs on the side of intervening. I guess it's probably both. But I think the verdict of history is in on Rwanda, right? Almost everyone, even mostly pacifistic people, think we should have tried to stop the genocide? So if that haunts Hillary Clinton, well, that's probably something that should haunt all of us.

The global failure to intervene there, as well as the results of Yugoslavia have played a huge role in shaping her perspective on interventionism. She has said as much. Rwanda is something that absolutely should haunt all of us. Like a lot of countries that had been subjected to colonialism, the divides among its people were deliberately exacerbated by ruling Western powers in order to make them easier to control, and the long-term effects of those has been civil war and horrific intracountry violence. During one such explosion of violence the world decided to wash their hands of it and the result was churches filled with piles of hacked-up bodies and around a million dead within a hundred-day period. If the specter of Rwanda doesn't haunt you when weighing the pros and cons of intervention then I would argue you either have not read enough about it or are made of stone. It sounds paradoxical in the context of sending in troops and military support, but the fact that Rwanda and Yugoslavia have had such deep, lasting effects on Clinton is itself a testament to her compassion and humanity.
posted by Anonymous at 5:10 PM on June 10, 2016


Trump Cites Don King's Support to Call Himself 'The Least Racist Person'
"You know, Don endorsed me. You wanna take that back with you? You know, this could be a story, it just came out. He just delivered it to my office. But isn't that funny? This is Don King. Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody. He’s not endorsing a racist, okay?"
Don King denies Donald Trump endorsement: "'Nice,' Trump said of the apparently imagined endorsement."
posted by kirkaracha at 5:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


the fact that Rwanda and Yugoslavia have had such deep, lasting effects on Clinton is itself a testament to her compassion and humanity.

I'm really skeptical about Clinton's foreign policy but I think this is true, and important.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:19 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


As a total sidenote: it's a shame that Trump is the first candidate in American history since, I dunno Horace Greeley primaried Grant, that a private figure got so far in the race for the presidency. Everyone else was a politician, either civilian or military. It's shame that it takes a rich celebrity jerk to be the exception. Which is why I'm with Itaxpica - I will always consider Lawrence Lessig to be my 2016 presidential primary candidate of choice, if not who I will actually vote for in the general. Because if you're going to dream, dream big, dream wildly, dream pipe dreams and fever dreams. Because I wanted to see single-issue (but it's such a systemic issue!) Citizen Lessig be on the same debate stage with veteran politicians. Because it's what Aaron Swartz would have wanted(???????)
posted by Apocryphon at 5:25 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


As a total sidenote: it's a shame that Trump is the first candidate in American history since, I dunno Horace Greeley primaried Grant, that a private figure got so far in the race for the presidency.

Ross Perot? He got 20% of the votes in the general election.
posted by Justinian at 5:28 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ah, very true. But while Perot isn't a jerk, he's still a billionaire. I mean, there's been other magnates like Steve Forbes who ran for the GOP nomination in 2000. I can't think of any private figures who participated in the major parties' primaries. I guess Deez Nuts was also a contender.

Also, I guess Greeley was a congressman briefly, so even he had experience in office.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:30 PM on June 10, 2016


CNN:
Romney, who actively sought to recruit an independent, third-party challenger to Trump, also conceded that a credible candidate will not emerge. But he did show a new openness to one non-Trump candidate, libertarian Gary Johnson, whom he did not rule out voting for.

Johnson's running mate is another former Massachusetts governor, Bill Weld, who once fundraised for Romney. If the ticket was flipped and Weld was the standard-bearer, Romney said he would have no qualms about voting for the libertarian ticket this fall.

"If Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy for me to vote for Bill Weld for president," Romney said. "So I'll get to know Gary Johnson better and see if he's someone who I could end up voting for. That's something which I'll evaluate over the coming weeks and months."

Romney's comments on "The Situation Room" are some of the highest-profile support bestowed upon the libertarian ticket, which is almost certain to be less funded compared to the GOP and Democratic lines. He did however express an uneasiness with Johnson, given his position on marijuana legalization.

"Marijuana makes people stupid," Romney quipped.
Maybe back off on calling other people stupid when you are currently trying to explain why your party nominated Donald Trump to be President of the United States.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:35 PM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


"Marijuana makes people stupid," Romney quipped.

hey CNN a quip is a witty remark

and witty means quick and inventive and funny

just fyi
posted by dersins at 5:43 PM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]


I feel myself getting stupider every time I see one of these Trump rallies.
posted by Justinian at 5:52 PM on June 10, 2016


Went looking for anything about Brexit in the 2016 US election, and found almost nothing; an extremely short editorial by Bill Clinton in New Statesman.

You'd think something so important to a chief American ally would merit some discussion. I'm afraid the general stupidity of Donald Trump will make it possible for the media and political elite to have an entire presidential campaign and not talk about pretty important stuff.

Britain and the crisis of the neoliberal state
from last year.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:55 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


You'd think something so important to a chief American ally would merit some discussion. I'm afraid the general stupidity of Donald Trump will make it possible for the media and political elite to have an entire presidential campaign and not talk about pretty important stuff.

oh man, if they *do* ask Trump about Brexit, you just know he'll give some horrifyingly xenophobic argument in favor of withdrawal, which might actually swing the UK vote against. I'd bet there's a nonzero number of fence-sitters who'd be like "somehow when Boris Johnson, Nick Griffin, and Nigel Farage argued for Brexit, it didn't sound terrible, but Donald Trump? Piss off!"
posted by duffell at 6:16 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Mark Hensch at The Hill, on June 1: “Trump apparently stumped by ‘Brexit’ question”
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on June 10, 2016


(To be clear, he was stumped by the phrase, not the notion.)
posted by Going To Maine at 6:19 PM on June 10, 2016


"How the Press Should Work"
(followed by this "editorial webcomic's" longest stream-of-consciousness blog entry ever, which concludes with "Cats are smarter than humans because they lick their ass. They never vote for it.")
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:23 PM on June 10, 2016


Truly, a level of foreign-policy expertise matched only by such luminaries as Herman Cain.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:23 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support

See, I keep reading stuff like this and it doesn't fit what I remember of this primary. Clinton basically had the lead for almost the entire way and never lost it. The outcome was pretty much a given after Super Tuesday. There was this idea that Sanders was gaining momentum because he was winning "states", but those were states with lower numbers of delegates. No matter what he won, Clinton won more, and he was steadily falling further behind with every contest. Far from a "furious rally", the numbers show that Clinton's team was playing it smart and saving a ton of their cash for the expected general.

Clinton's team was very strategic with this race, and it does them a disservice to rewrite the last couple of months of the primary as if they were panicking and throwing money down the drain in anticipation of an unexpected loss.
posted by Salieri at 6:28 PM on June 10, 2016 [62 favorites]


Oh man I can't wait till the foreign policy debate when Clinton speaks at length about what the US' policy on Brexit should be, and then Trump rebuts with an armpit fart or something.
posted by Sara C. at 6:31 PM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


As a total sidenote: it's a shame that Trump is the first candidate in American history since, I dunno Horace Greeley primaried Grant, that a private figure got so far in the race for the presidency.

Wendell Wilkie doesn't count?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:32 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh man I can't wait till the foreign policy debate when Clinton speaks at length about what the US' policy on Brexit should be, and then Trump rebuts with an armpit fart or something.

You might regret it if the CNN-Insta-Reacto-Knobs show that the public prefers the armpit fart
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:39 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Oh man I can't wait till the foreign policy debate when Clinton speaks at length about what the US' policy on Brexit should be, and then Trump rebuts with an armpit fart or something.

I can.
posted by duffell at 6:46 PM on June 10, 2016


We now live in a world where even MITT FUCKING ROMNEY is thinking about voting Libertarian.

!!!
posted by Jacqueline at 7:05 PM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]


The debates are going to be interesting. You have someone who knows every subject inside and out. There's not a policy question they can ask that Clinton doesn't understand completely. Trump may try to cram the night ahead, but he won't be able to actually talk about any subject with any bit of depth. So he won't. He'll say something briefly related based on what he was told and then attack Clinton. Or say "You know what the real problem is? Immigants! You know it was them!" And it's sad, but a lot of people will forget the question entirely and be like "Yeah! He's right!". I still doubt enough for him to win. But they won't be playing the same game.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:09 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


(To be clear, he was stumped by the phrase, not the notion.)

I don't think my mind would process a spoken "Brexit" either. Some words are just for the Internet. Do they say "Brexit" out loud on the TV news?
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:15 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


So how does one pivot to center or triangulate when debating Trump? Would it be possible? Would it even be necessary?
posted by klarck at 7:18 PM on June 10, 2016


My tongue sputters on the slightest portmanteau. Can't stand them. But I'm an idiot and I've at least heard the term.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:24 PM on June 10, 2016


BBC podcasts say "Brexit" all the time.
posted by glhaynes at 7:46 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Maybe Hillary can just look into the camera, The Office-style, every time Trump spews something especially vile or nonsensical. Like, the in person version of "Delete your account."
posted by yasaman at 7:49 PM on June 10, 2016 [12 favorites]


I imagine we're in for some dramatically stunned blinking, at the very least
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


During the Greek economic melt down there was talk of a Grexit. Then when Britain started talking about pulling out they adapted the term to Brexit (although I have also seen the word Brixit.)

I've been following the debate and there is so much misinformation and made-up financial figures that I've begun to believe nobody really knows for sure what the best thing for Britain would be. While I tend to agree with President Obama that a united Europe is a stronger Europe, I can see how the EU regulations must seem draconian not to mention the heavy tax burden.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:08 PM on June 10, 2016


Oh man I can't wait till the foreign policy debate when Clinton speaks at length about what the US' policy on Brexit should be, and then Trump rebuts with an armpit fart or something.

I think that policy matters as little as it's ever mattered in this race. The clowns who run the debates are going to play up the sensational nature of Trump's personality, and the clowns watching the debate are going to care about zingers. In the event that as specific question as one about the Brexit comes up the armpit noise is going to win.
posted by codacorolla at 8:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wait do we really think that the actual legit Presidential Debates are going to be strongarmed by the Republican campaign into some kind of farce like the Fox News debates from the Republican Clown Car era of the primaries? Because I seriously don't think that's going to happen (the general election debates are a different jam). And if this is the year that happens, I quit America for real.

Or is it just that it's been 4 years and we forgot how this works?
posted by Sara C. at 8:23 PM on June 10, 2016


I'm kind of expecting the debates to include some "What's the price of a gallon of milk? Gallon of gas? Carton of eggs?" curveballs to emphasize how different both candidates are from "average" people. Hopefully Clinton's people will keep her prepared for that (or hey, maybe she'll actually know on her own?), because Trump will be able to do the "hurr hurr I'm a billionaire, what do I care?" thing and then pivot directly from that to "I care about ordinary people" stuff and his followers will eat it up.

Wait do we really think that the actual legit Presidential Debates are going to be strongarmed...

I don't think they'll be strong-armed by the GOP, no. But I think there's gonna be some fierce competition over moving the goalposts for each candidate. Trump will be a lot like Palin in that he'll be touted as "impressive" and "surprising" if he can manage not to vomit on stage.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:27 PM on June 10, 2016


Nick Confessore ‏@nickconfessore
It is hard to tell the genuine young Trump supporters from the ironic fake supporters who showed up for shits and giggles.

Nick Confessore ‏@nickconfessore
Two guys I interviewed were high as kites and a group of others said they were "here for the memes."

posted by Drinky Die at 8:29 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think that policy matters as little as it's ever mattered in this race. The clowns who run the debates are going to play up the sensational nature of Trump's personality, and the clowns watching the debate are going to care about zingers. In the event that as specific question as one about the Brexit comes up the armpit noise is going to win.


i dont know if its even as complicated as that. i feel like it boils down to:

did you hate the high school class president? (hillary clinton)
has anyone ever specifically pandered to you? (bernie sanders)
how did you feel about the rich kids? (Donald trump)
posted by pocketfullofrye at 8:33 PM on June 10, 2016


It is hard to tell the genuine young Trump supporters from the ironic fake supporters who showed up for shits and giggles.

Two guys I interviewed were high as kites and a group of others said they were "here for the memes."


Has he seen /pol/ lately? Trump supports are all about the memes.
posted by Talez at 8:33 PM on June 10, 2016


If you are ever anywhere for the memes, it is perhaps time to go home.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:33 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


If you are ever anywhere for the memes, it is perhaps time to go home.

But Trump will make anime real AWOO~~!
posted by Talez at 8:38 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Guys, the "Google manipulated search results to hide Hillary's criminal past" conspiracy just hit my social network HARD and I don't know what to dooooooooooooo

Like actual intelligent people I like and respect think this is real


wot
posted by Sara C. at 8:39 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Guys, the "Google manipulated search results to hide Hillary's criminal past" conspiracy just hit my social network HARD and I don't know what to dooooooooooooo

Pure selection bias.
posted by Talez at 8:41 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


I posted a link that I found upthread here debunking it and also a link to Buzzfeed debunking it (No words, just the link, because I couldn't even) and it seemed to work.
posted by Weeping_angel at 8:42 PM on June 10, 2016


Like actual intelligent people I like and respect think this is real

I kind of don't care about all this. But it is interesting that the autocomplete suggestions are different on google than on bing and yahoo. Facebook was recently outed for manipulating the news feed, why wouldn't google juke the stats too?

The video is stupid, and I hate the snowballing narrative of Evil Hillary with her Tentacles of Corruption, but if I had control over Google's search results, I'd manipulate things so that the Dems won, no questions asked. I wouldn't feel any guilt about it either.
posted by dis_integration at 8:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Trump definitely has the best memes among these candidates, superior to other memes in the way that some marijuana is superior to other marijuana. Sadly, my Pepe portfolio is now completely worthless with the market flooded with common Trump Pepes.

Bernie had some pretty good ones too. I quite enjoyed "Compare Them On The Issues That Matter". I would have quite enjoyed seeing a war of memes between him and Trump.

Clinton I feel really needs to up the meme game. Sorry to say it but that "Delete your account" earlier was pretty "fellow kids" level. She needs to get back to the "Texts From Hillary" level, that was definitely competitive. But apparently the photo in that one was what started her e-mail troubles, so perhaps in reaction she is neglecting the meme campaign...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:46 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


Seeing the posts about how google doesn't autocomplete 'crime's for anyone's name as a matter of policy, the differences make sense. The point though is that it's totally plausible. People are really disappointed. I remember when Gore lost. It was like someone killed my dog.
posted by dis_integration at 8:46 PM on June 10, 2016


Oh man! I return from Republican Twitter with totally serious surrealist humor
posted by corb at 8:47 PM on June 10, 2016 [14 favorites]


...what the frak did I just watch?
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 8:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's not "totally plausible" because Hillary Clinton isn't a criminal.

Believing that this is totally plausible implies that you also believe that Hillary has done something so terrible that she's had to bribe Google to erase it from history.

Which is tinfoil hat level paranoia. Not to mention if you believe that Hillary Clinton is an actual criminal (like not "did she handle top secret emails in a suboptimal way" but real legit crime), you're getting your information from old far-right smear campaigns, and you really have to stop and look in the mirror and ask yourself if you're a progressive, really.
posted by Sara C. at 8:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]


you're getting your information from old far-right smear campaigns, and you really have to stop and look in the mirror and ask yourself if you're a progressive, really.

Every time a Bernie supporter uses Fox News as a source to slander Clinton I die a little on the inside. And the outside while I bang my head against the wall repeatedly.
posted by Talez at 8:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]


Friends of friends seem to be discovering the "Hillary defended a rapist" thing on my FB feed. First, I'm kinda surprised this is turning up now when the whole thing isn't exactly news. What's worse, though, is when some of these people see that there's a Snopes article about it, they seem to be just assuming that Snopes corroborates their ugly memes.

...or maybe they're actually reading the Snopes entry and still coming away feeling like it's valid? Ugh.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:59 PM on June 10, 2016


Yep. I've had that one too.
posted by Talez at 9:00 PM on June 10, 2016


TrumpSingles.com is a real thing. I wonder how many women are going to sign up for that?

Also Trump has announced that there will be a "sports theme night" during the RNC. "I'm thinking about getting some of the great sports people I know, who like me a lot," Trump said at a rally in Richmond, Virginia. "We may call it 'The Winners' evening."
Trump also said the night could include others, like Brian France, the owner of NASCAR, who backed Trump in February.
"Do we all love NASCAR? Because I do," Trump said.

I swear I haven't been drinking.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


That one made the rounds in my social media feed a few weeks ago and luckily was swiftly debunked.

What are the chances that these viral anti-Hillary memes are whisper campaigns originating from Republican sources? They seem much more targeted and ubiquitous than anything I saw during the actual primaries. I'm sure they're fueled by bitter Bernie Bros, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they didn't originate there.
posted by Sara C. at 9:04 PM on June 10, 2016


Susana Martinez is the governor of New Mexico, chair of the Republican Governors Association, and has remained pretty cagey on Trump. Her future is bright.

As a New Mexican I feel it is my civic duty to link to this any time Susana is mentioned: Susana Martinez drunk dialed 9-1-1 and the audio is amazing
posted by joedan at 9:04 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


The Bernie stuff was much more in the vein of those "Both Candidates On The Issues" things, or other half jokey memes. Or positive pro-Bernie stuff like the bird thing.
posted by Sara C. at 9:05 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm still a little weirded out that some of you are seeing this overwhelming sort of "Bernie supporters being an asshole" thing so often. Especially at this point in the election. Because I absolutely don't. And it's not cause I actively avoid it or anything. Most people I know on Facebook that I went to school with or are old friends or whatever just don't post about this stuff. And they're huge Bernie supporters generally (I went to a weirdly left wing Oklahoma high school. Just say the name and other Tulsans know who we are). But every time people post about "the backlash" or "the conspiracies being promoted" or whatever I just can't connect that to what I see. And we're all in our bubbles (me included). But loud voices are loud voices. They generally should be ignored no matter how loud they're talking. And they're probably not as loud as they seem.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:07 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


I swear I haven't been drinking.

Now's as good a time as any to start. You don't want to face the next five months sober.
posted by jackbishop at 9:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


Oh god
Ooohhhhhhhh god

It turns out the source of all of this, that SourceFed video, was made by an acquaintance of mine.

The real question is whether other people in my social circle are sharing it because they know him and thus that lends it more credibility to them, or whether they're really that dumb.

Also, for everyone who is seeing this crap, on behalf of Los Angeles comedians everywhere, I'm sorry.

(Oh and hey if you wanna debunk this a little, "invented out of whole cloth by a YouTube personality and comedian from Hollywood" might be a start.)
posted by Sara C. at 9:26 PM on June 10, 2016 [20 favorites]


(I went to a weirdly left wing Oklahoma high school. Just say the name and other Tulsans know who we are)

Washington? Because the Edison I went to was pretty conservative, and you're too smart to have gone to Memorial.
posted by dw at 9:40 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yep. But we don't call it that. It's Booker T. or BTW. Washington was the name they started calling it to make it seem less Black to the wider community.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:44 PM on June 10, 2016


As a New Mexican I feel it is my civic duty to link to this any time Susana is mentioned: Susana Martinez drunk dialed 9-1-1 and the audio is amazing

Oh wow. This is probably nothing? But man, so high school sounding. So very high school
posted by Going To Maine at 9:47 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


I can't find it, but there was a comment on a thread last year about trolls:

"HA! Made you think I was being racist there!"
"So you're not racist?"
"Oh no we totally are"

Which is how I feel about Donald Trump memes.
posted by halifix at 9:54 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm still a little weirded out that some of you are seeing this overwhelming sort of "Bernie supporters being an asshole"

Facebook bias. It really just means your friends are assholes.
posted by iamck at 11:23 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]


My Facebook wall is mostly images that equate Clinton and Trump, suggesting they're is no difference between the two. A few of them are borderline pornographic. The people posting them are equal parts disgruntled Sanders supporters and disgruntled Republicans.

Honestly, how anyone could see these two candidates as equally bad is beyond me. One should be able to despise then both and still recognize that Trump is completely worse in every conceivable way.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:49 AM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


NO i want the jaeger suiting up music from pacific rim

Also Clinton should get chain swords installed in her arms.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:51 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


re the crime thing

I've told this story here a few times, but:

I share a name with a woman who was accused of killing her kids (since exonerated). I embarrassingly Google myself occasionally to see if my writing floats up. If I don't include my location as a search term, the poor lady accused of killing her kids is what pops up all over.

Once I was hanging out on metachat, and I had the following exchange:

Angrycat, why'd you kill your kids?
I-I don't have any kids.
Well NOT ANYMORE

But I digress. My point is that when I Google my name, I don't get suggested search terms being along the lines of XXX that lady who killed her kids. Just many many articles about the woman.
posted by angrycat at 3:11 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


TrumpSingles.com is a real thing.

Individually wrapped slices of Trump Product
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:49 AM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


As American as American Cheese.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:59 AM on June 11, 2016


make America grate again
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:31 AM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


That surplus still stinking up the warehouses?
posted by infini at 5:01 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm getting awfully tired of parmesan politics.
posted by valetta at 5:04 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Then you should welcome the Cheeze-Whiz that is Trump.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:25 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


No Gouda can come of this.
We've created a Muenster.
And he doesn't know Jack.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:26 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's not "totally plausible" because Hillary Clinton isn't a criminal.

Just to clarify, the thing that's plausible is that the Clinton campaign, supposing it had that kind of access (which is also plausible) asked someone at Google if they could help massage search results. That's totally plausible, and is entirely orthogonal to the issue of Clinton's criminality. For what it's worth, which isn't much, I think she's a war criminal, but so is Obama, not just for the drone bombings but for the 'we have to forget about the past and not prosecute the Bush monsters for torture and murder' bullshit.... and Sanders sounded like he was going to happily join the hallowed list of American Presidents who murder from the sky without due process, so the whole thing is fugatz.
posted by dis_integration at 6:48 AM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm still a little weirded out that some of you are seeing this overwhelming sort of "Bernie supporters being an asshole" thing so often.

Well, take a look at, for example, Elizabeth Warren's most recent FB post. Filter for "top comments" (instead of chronological). That seems pretty overwhelming. You don't have to look hard to see this stuff.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:57 AM on June 11, 2016 [12 favorites]




Well, take a look at, for example, Elizabeth Warren's most recent FB post. Filter for "top comments" (instead of chronological). That seems pretty overwhelming. You don't have to look hard to see this stuff.

Some of the dumbest fucking rhetoric I've ever seen which completely fails to grasp the reality of the situation. To quote Will McAvoy, "If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?"

This is why.
posted by Talez at 7:31 AM on June 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


Fusion: We put together an all-woman Cabinet for Hillary Clinton

I'm not sure that poaching, what, 6? women senators counts as an overall step forward for women in politics. We can do better, no?
posted by Salamandrous at 7:36 AM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Clinton I feel really needs to up the meme game.

Pretty sure we just learned she doesn't.

Memes don't vote.

They're yard signs for 23-year olds.
posted by dersins at 7:40 AM on June 11, 2016 [15 favorites]


In short: Trump is scary but I'm not convinced he's as scary as we all keep saying he is.

That is INSANE.


That was the kind of comment I was referring to here, for which I got taken to task for being unable to accept disagreement.
posted by bardophile at 7:54 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


A lot of problems with the electoral system are going to take a constitutional amendment to fix. Mainly because to fix things Article 2, Section 1 needs to be completely gutted and replaced with a popular vote IRV situation. Then you can vote Bernie or Stein or Johnson all you want and so long as Trump is last he won't get in.

But small states won't buy it because it dilutes their power while republican states legislatures won't buy it because they know it means there will never be a Republican president again without a massive swing to the left to attract more than angry white male. We can't even get the NPVIC passed in an electoral college majority of states and that alone would do more to fix the electoral college bullshit more than anything that's vaguely possible currently.

I'd prefer Bernie over Hillary. But we go to war with the candidates the process has distilled and you fall in line. Because if we don't there is going to be a massive swing rightward that nobody is going to be able to stand in the way of even if we make the Iraq War protests look like a peaceful Sunday picnic.
posted by Talez at 7:56 AM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

Lest you think putting the guy in charge of anything, ever, is a good idea.
posted by Artw at 8:14 AM on June 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride: "Crisis Of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience With Hillary, Bill, And How They Operate,” by Gary Byrne will be released on June 28, 2016. The excerpts I've read sound pretty nasty.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:17 AM on June 11, 2016


Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride

Have you NOT been buckled up for the past billion years of this nightmare-campaign?
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:28 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Can someone also tell Shaun King to cool it?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh good another I WILL EXPOSE HOW BAD THE CLINTONS ARE book from a conservative publisher. We haven't had one of those for at least twenty minutes. Surely this...
posted by dersins at 8:32 AM on June 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


Clinton has been buckled in for 25+ years of this scurrilous shit so I'm not too worried.
posted by stolyarova at 8:32 AM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


"In order to take Bumpy Election Ride your hands have to be THIS big."
posted by pyramid termite at 8:32 AM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


SLoG, what are the nasty excerpts? The things I read were of the "Bill and Hillary yelled at each other a lot, maybe she even broke a vase!" variety, which... I dunno if people are gonna care that much? But maybe there is more stuff that I haven't seen.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:32 AM on June 11, 2016


SLoG, what are the nasty excerpts? The things I read were of the "Bill and Hillary yelled at each other a lot, maybe she even broke a vase!" variety, which... I dunno if people are gonna care that much? But maybe there is more stuff that I haven't seen.

After googling, the Vase Story also includes Mr. Clinton having a "real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.". I guess the 90s were not as insanely tv focussed as the Bush years were, but if Bush couldn't keep Pretzelchoking-gate a secret, how would Clinton have kept his black eye under wraps? Anyway, I'd throw a vase at Bubba if I caught him diddling the intern, too.
posted by dis_integration at 8:42 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Clinton campaign hires Bernie campaign's top student organizer

Abandon ship!
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:50 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm still a little weirded out that some of you are seeing this overwhelming sort of "Bernie supporters being an asshole" thing so often. Especially at this point in the election. Because I absolutely don't.

I think it is heavily dependent on your social circle. I have a lot of Bernie-supporting friends and my Facebook feed has remained mostly free of insane conspiracy theories, though that bit about "she's not the nominee, superdelegates don't vote until July 26th" and the SourceFed video had their hot minute in the sun.

But I can tell Bernie Conspiracy Theorist Hell exists, because I get a glimpse at it through the comments sections of the political posts my friends do make--whether they support Clinton or Bernie*. One friend laments he can't share anything pro-Clinton because it makes his friends furious, and I don't blame him because when he does he gets a barrage of frothing-at-the-mouth insanity that rivals anything you'd see on Reddit.

I am thankful for my general isolation from this stuff, because I see what others have to deal with.

*I know that I know people who support Trump, but ever since Trayvon Martin was murdered my friends list has undergone a long, slow unfriending/unfollowing process and I think I must have basically eliminated all of them from my feed at this point
posted by Anonymous at 8:57 AM on June 11, 2016


From the Inquisitr:
In the book, Byrne describes Hillary as too “erratic, uncontrollable and occasionally violent” to become the next president of the United States. He goes on to say that what he saw in the 1990s sickened him and then tells of Ms. Clinton repeatedly shouting obscenities at her husband, Secret Service agents, and other White House staff members. He says her staff members were all afraid of her next outburst. At times, he alleges, Secret Service agents even had conversations about the possibility that they would have to protect the president from his wife’s physical attacks.

One morning just before a key presidential address to the nation, the couple had a particularly violent encounter. Ms. Clinton was reported to have been so paranoid that she attempted to have the Secret Service banned from the White House and even tried to ditch her security detail once. Gary Byrne, outlining the details in his book, believes this type of behavior is indicative of problems that should prohibit her from being elected president. [snip]

Byrne claims in his book that he interrupted the president’s sexual indiscretions in the White House. He said he once walked into a room where the president was “involved inappropriately with a woman” who wasn’t his wife, nor was she Monica Lewinsky. He also says he once threw away a White House towel that was stained with lipstick and the president’s “bodily fluids.”
I would really not like to hear about Bill's cum rag on CNN, however something tells me that Gary Byrne is going to making the rounds of all the FOX News shows.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:03 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


But small states won't buy it because it dilutes their power while republican states legislatures won't buy it because they know it means there will never be a Republican president again without a massive swing to the left to attract more than angry white male.

Are large states or Democrats at any level making any sort of movement towards remedying the basic problems you're talking about that make a "spoiler effect" possible as a consequence of people voting for the candidate who they believe would best represent them? In particular, states can on their own change their state-level elections to provide proportional representation or transferable vote systems or something like that without changing the federal Constitution.

Fixing basic problems in our democracy should be of overriding importance but I don't think there's a massive clamor to eliminate gerrymandering or spoiler effects that is only failing because it's obstructed by those dastardly small states and Republicans. (If there is, though, I'd certainly like to know about it; I haven't gone looking for something along those lines this election season yet.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:04 AM on June 11, 2016


God, imagine being married to Bill Clinton and not being allowed to yell at him.
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on June 11, 2016 [40 favorites]


Building a wall is totes "Biblical" guys! Not so much of the New Age, Feelin groovy New Testament nonsense but hardcore, Wrath 'O God Old Testament stuff: Speaking Friday to at the Road to Majority conference in Washington D.C., [Senator Jeff] Sessions said: “I believe that it’s right and moral and just and biblical that we have a lawful system of immigration for the nation state that we serve.” [snip] “You know,” Sessions said, “I recall Nehemiah returning to Jerusalem and asked for permission to come home. And the king let him go. And he went home — just a little bit of a humorous joke — to do what? To build a wall. He went to build a wall in Jerusalem.”

So that'll surely get the Evangelicals on board the TRUMP train: the Bible actually mentions walls. You know what else is Biblical? Slaves, giving your virgin daughters to the mob, and sending bears to tear up children who have mocked you. I can't wait to see TRUMP bring up those policies.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:26 AM on June 11, 2016


Are large states or Democrats at any level making any sort of movement towards remedying the basic problems you're talking about that make a "spoiler effect" possible as a consequence of people voting for the candidate who they believe would best represent them? In particular, states can on their own change their state-level elections to provide proportional representation or transferable vote systems or something like that without changing the federal Constitution.

You land straight back into the same problem as NPVIC where not enough states do it to make a difference. Then you have the second spoiler effect. Let's say Bernie takes Cali on preferences. Great. Democrats just lost 55 EVs and threw the election to the house.
posted by Talez at 9:32 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


When people talk about Bernie supporters being assholes, they mean things like this, where a pro-Bernie website quotes unnamed sources in the Los Angeles County elections department saying that the votes were somehow "flipped" (.i.e., Bernie votes were hacked to become Clinton votes).

All of the material on that website is 100% anonymous sources, telling everybody that Clinton's repeated victories are actually fraud, that the vast majority of Americans want Bernie, but Wall Street and $hillary are keeping them down, and also suggesting that Wall Street has secret agents in the Sanders campaign (!!!!), attempting to sabotage everything.

This is literally the same kind of political delusion that the Tea Party labors under (we are legion, everyone supports us, International Elites are attempting to thwart our inevitable rise, etc.). It's dangerous, it's destructive and it's actually more poisonous to democracy than Clinton's centrist neoliberal politics.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 9:35 AM on June 11, 2016 [30 favorites]


...Women lead different lives than men, and would consequently govern differently if more of them were in office. And the evidence strongly suggests that electing women to high-profile jobs inspires more women to run for and win lower-profile jobs. The presidency is by far the highest-profile job in American politics, meaning a Clinton presidency would likely have a meaningful downstream impact on women's representation for years to come — with far-reaching ramifications for public policy at both the state and national level.

Clinton's campaign is focused at the moment on making the case against Donald Trump, which is obviously an important aspect of their strategy. But at the end of the day, to turn out voters you need to make them feel excited about the idea of being part of something larger and interesting. For Clinton, the woman angle is by far the most promising route to accomplishing that.

And it's not something they should feel sheepish about saying or that others should dismiss as symbolism. The life experience and personal identity of the governing class matters enormously, and a Clinton presidency would shift the composition of the American government in a profound and unprecedented way.
Hillary Clinton will be the first woman presidential nominee — that's a big deal beyond symbolism
posted by y2karl at 9:35 AM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


For the record: I voted for Sanders in my state's primary. The tipping point for me, I think, was when I started hearing other Bernie supporters talking about wide-ranging conspiracies and "secret agent infiltration", etc.

This is the way that people talk when they can no longer face reality. I can accept the fact that the majority of Democratic voters in my state (who are almost all people of color) didn't choose Bernie. But some people simply cannot accept that, so obviously the Rothschilds and the CIA are responsible for our loss. It's certainly not *our* fault.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 9:41 AM on June 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


All of the material on that website is 100% anonymous sources, telling everybody that Clinton's repeated victories are actually fraud, that the vast majority of Americans want Bernie, but Wall Street and $hillary are keeping them down, and also suggesting that Wall Street has secret agents in the Sanders campaign, attempting to sabotage everything.

A useful rule of thumb vis a vis conspiracies is that if your theory requires that literally thousands of people are keeping a huge secret, your theory is completely full of shit.
posted by dersins at 9:41 AM on June 11, 2016 [36 favorites]


Are large states or Democrats at any level making any sort of movement towards remedying the basic problems you're talking about that make a "spoiler effect" possible as a consequence of people voting for the candidate who they believe would best represent them? In particular, states can on their own change their state-level elections to provide proportional representation or transferable vote systems or something like that without changing the federal Constitution.

Fixing basic problems in our democracy should be of overriding importance but I don't think there's a massive clamor to eliminate gerrymandering or spoiler effects that is only failing because it's obstructed by those dastardly small states and Republicans. (If there is, though, I'd certainly like to know about it; I haven't gone looking for something along those lines this election season yet.)


California has implemented a new primary system by which the top two vote getters - from either party - go on to the general. This fall we will be voting for either Senator Harris (D) or Senator Sanchez (D). A number of cities, including Oakland, have switched to rank choice. We also now have an independent redistricting commission. Both were passed through ballot propositions. Our neighbor to the east also has an independent redistricting commission, which commission was recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

These are the incremental changes people are talking about. This is how our political system works. The federal government is inherently conservative - and that's a good thing. We have fifty mini federal governments that are proving grounds for all kinds of policy, from cannabis decriminalization to gay marriage, from austerity budgets to abortion restrictions. Some of these policies become unignorably successful and eventually get adopted at the federal level. Some flame out and eventually - let's hope - dropped in the political garbage bin.
posted by one_bean at 9:46 AM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


It looks like the leaks coming out of Romneys' retreat are that in private, they all yelled at Ryan and made him feel sad about endorsing Trump (down to "my kid used to respect you, what do I tell him?") And Ryan just made sad doe eyes and was like "what was I supposed to do, he's our nominee?"
posted by corb at 10:03 AM on June 11, 2016 [44 favorites]


And Ryan just made sad doe eyes and was like "what was I supposed to do, he's our nominee?"

What was I supposed to do? My lust for power is insatiable.
posted by dis_integration at 10:13 AM on June 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


Yes, I read that about half the people who attended are not voting for Trump and Meg Whitman said she is not only voting for Hillary Clinton. she might even donate to her campaign.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:15 AM on June 11, 2016 [11 favorites]


When people talk about Bernie supporters being assholes, they mean things like this, where a pro-Bernie website quotes unnamed sources in the Los Angeles County elections department saying that the votes were somehow "flipped" (.i.e., Bernie votes were hacked to become Clinton votes).

That's the exact conspiracy that has made me question the judgment of an uncomfortable number of my friends and, sigh, coworkers. A regional comedian I look up to has gone HAM in comments sections to defend it's veracity. The thickness of the Bernue tinfoil is freaking me out.
posted by EatTheWeek at 10:28 AM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


I tend to ignore the speculation that Trump is mentally ill, but then something like this happens.
posted by chaoticgood at 10:35 AM on June 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


This video was going around on FB the other day -- which hilariously shows that if you angle your camera from above, you can easily make it appear as though your finger is selecting a different candidate than what you're actually selecting.

Well, either it shows that, or it shows A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY BY THE MICHAEL STEINBERG POLITICAL MACHINE

It's seriously almost flat earth stuff at this point.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:39 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I tend to ignore the speculation that Trump is mentally ill, but then something like this happens.
posted by chaoticgood at 1:35 PM

LOLOLOLOLOLOL I wonder if the flag hugged him back? He sure looks blissful.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:44 AM on June 11, 2016


Yep. But we don't call it that. It's Booker T. or BTW.

I called it Washington because BTW (which is what I usually call it) means something else on the web. My sister-in-law went there.
posted by dw at 10:45 AM on June 11, 2016


I tend to ignore the speculation that Trump is mentally ill, but then something like this happens.

Trump has been flag hugging for a while now (this photo from August 2015). It's part of his whole kabuki act.

When he accepts the nomination in July, I expect him to come out on stage wearing the American flag like he just won the gold medal at the Olympics.
posted by dis_integration at 10:45 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rockefeller Republicans were...often, but not necessarily, culturally liberal. They espoused government and private investments in environmentalism, healthcare, and higher education as necessities for a better society and economic growth, in the tradition of Rockefeller. In general, Rockefeller Republicans opposed socialism and government ownership. They supported some regulation of business and many New Deal–style social programs. A critical element was their support for labor unions...In foreign policy, most wanted to use American power in cooperation with allies to fight against the spread of communism. They wanted to help American business expand abroad...Rockefeller Republicans were most common in the Northeast and the West Coast, with their larger liberal constituencies; they were rare in the South and Midwest.
I really, really don't mean this to be another round of "Clinton is to the right of Nixon!!!" argument. But I've been visualizing the Overton Window on a football field recently - mostly because I think it's useful for me to consider Clinton's approach as being one of short runs and quick dump passes and Sanders wants to throw a bomb downfield on every play. But with the news that Romney, Whitman, and other moderate Republicans are abandoning Trump and potentially even supporting the Democratic nominee, I've started wondering where all those Rockefeller Republicans have gone. I think the Republican Party has moved the ball so far downfield that a lot of moderates - like Lincoln Chafee - are standing around at the fifty yard line and realizing they're surrounded by Democrats.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the Democratic party's platform is literally a mid-20th century Republican platform. I'm suggesting that the Rockefeller Republicans had a big constituency, and that constituency is still around (remember, Mitt is the son of Gov. George Romney). They've progressed over the past fifty years, just like the rest of the country. "Socially liberal" in 1965 probably meant fighting anti-miscegenation law rather than pro gay marriage. Ignore the fact that Republican has become a dirty word for most Democrats. Ignore the policy details and read through the general description above. Doesn't that sound pretty much what Hillary Clinton is running on?
posted by one_bean at 10:47 AM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]




Have you heard of Trump's brilliant idea to reach out to female voters by letting... Ben Roethlisberger speak at the RNC?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:48 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's probably ok unless he starts humping the flag, then we'll have to get the hose
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:50 AM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


California has implemented a new primary system by which the top two vote getters - from either party - go on to the general.

Something Washington implemented before California with mixed results. It means third parties are nearly always shut out because of the vote-spreading across the D and R candidates.

Washington and Oregon have done a ton to push for the future of democracy -- postal voting, independent commissions, online ballot tracking -- but the jungle primary just hasn't been as good as hoped for getting new voices in state legislatures.
posted by dw at 10:50 AM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wow. He may have invented a new Republican meme; wearing a flag lapel pin is so passive, hug a flag to show you love America!

I'm anxious to see if this catches on. First we'll see a reluctant Christie looking like an embarrassed dog caught humping a slipper, then one day Paul Ryan will do a quick, athletic hug to show he is a real GOPer. Before you know it flag hugging will become a required movement at every gathering and dry cleaning bills will go through the roof. Bumper sticker shortly to be seen at the WalMart parking lot: Have You Hugged Your Flag Today?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:56 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


poffin boffin: "i really want diamond joe "debating" trump, in this scenario it's trump blustering cretinously while joe smirks into the camera making jerkoff motions with one hand and sipping a beer with the other"

Thanks to this comment, I devolved into inappropriate stifled giggles during a software architecture meeting at work yesterday.
posted by double block and bleed at 10:58 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


For all the progressives supporting IRV, it's helpful to look at the Burlington, VT experience with it. Even in a city pretty intellectually dedicated to these sorts of progressive ideas it was voted away after two elections of experience with it. Any argument to implement this sort of policy needs to address these fundamental challenges of complexity and what are for many people non-intuitive results.
I think we need to make access to the ballots we have easier before we start tackling these sorts of more complex systems. Vote by mail, workers rights for time to vote, same day registration, national Election Day holiday, that sort of thing.
posted by meinvt at 10:58 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Washington and Oregon have done a ton to push for the future of democracy -- postal voting, independent commissions, online ballot tracking -- but the jungle primary just hasn't been as good as hoped for getting new voices in state legislatures.

For all the progressives supporting IRV, it's helpful to look at the Burlington, VT experience with it. Even in a city pretty intellectually dedicated to these sorts of progressive ideas it was voted away after two elections of experience with it. Any argument to implement this sort of policy needs to address these fundamental challenges of complexity and what are for many people non-intuitive results.

Like I said, it's a good thing we experiment at smaller scales before putting a ton of political energy to pass stuff at the federal level, only to find out it didn't do what we expected.
posted by one_bean at 11:01 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also want Biden to do a national whistle-stop tour but instead of visiting towns by train he rolls up in a sweet vintage Thunderbird, blasting "More Than a Feeling" at full blast, and burning rubber as he leaves to make it to the next town in time.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 11:01 AM on June 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


Have you heard of Trump's brilliant idea to reach out to female voters by letting... Ben Roethlisberger speak at the RNC?

Y'know, as soon as I heard Trump was talking about having a sports night, I literally thought "Hey he can get all those athletes accused of sexual assault to speak up for him!"

JFC. I'm waiting for him to put Brock Turner and his dad on his campaign committee.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:11 AM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


[The former Secret Service agent] goes on to say that what he saw in the 1990s sickened him and then tells of Ms. Clinton repeatedly shouting obscenities at her husband, Secret Service agents, and other White House staff members.

Given that a major line of attack against Hillary has been complicity in Bill's goatish behavior for not divorcing him, I think this book may actually help her in the general election. It makes her the victim without being passive or weak in any way, while insulating her from his behavior.
posted by msalt at 11:20 AM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


More Trump LOLs. He claims Don King's endorsement. King denies it. But Trump insists he's right and King's wrong.

Inevitably Trump will now start attacking King for being a liar and a fraud for denying his endorsement of The Donald.
posted by msalt at 11:24 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Trump puts out "winning athletes" like Kobe Bryant, Roethlisberger, and Jameis Winston, criticizing the press for the whole "the whole rape thing."

Clinton's campaign counters with Russell Wilson and Cam Newton, leading to lots of hot takes about whether Wilson is "too white to be black" and whether Newton is "too thug to be associated with a campaign reaching out to white men."

And so it will go.
posted by dw at 11:25 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


dw: "Trump puts out "winning athletes" like Kobe Bryant, Roethlisberger, and Jameis Winston, criticizing the press for the whole "the whole rape thing."
"

And don't forget Johnny Manziel. On top of the tone-deafness about sexual assault and domestic violence, it's as if Trump has no clue about football. Like, the only thing that could top bringing Big Ben into Cleveland is bringing back Johnny Football. Or maybe the dessicated corpse of Art Modell.
posted by mhum at 11:33 AM on June 11, 2016


Funny that the one black guy Trump thinks to say endorsed him as proof he's not racist is someone who, like Trump himself, is known for defrauding a bunch of people out of money. If you're going to lie about an endorsement, isn't there someone else you could have chosen? He's a parody of himself at this point.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:34 AM on June 11, 2016


Trump should claim that Ali and Prince endorsed him before dying because how could you refute that.

Or even go full Pinocchio and say that MLK and Gandhi endorsed him back before they were assassinated but he's been waiting for the right time to run.

Hell he could even say that Jesus manifested and told him that he needed to run against Hillary Clinton because she's the antichrist.
posted by vuron at 11:36 AM on June 11, 2016


Hell he could even say that Jesus manifested and told him that he needed to run against Hillary Clinton because she's the antichrist.

Hasn't that been, like, every candidate in the Republican primaries for a decade-plus?
posted by asperity at 11:42 AM on June 11, 2016 [11 favorites]


if Bush couldn't keep Pretzelchoking-gate a secret

Yeah I'm still pretty sure that was most likely him falling off the wagon, passing out drunk and hitting his head, and them coming up with "choking on a pretzel" as a cover.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:45 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of these days I should actually write out all my headcanons about the Bush Administration as real person fic. Anyone else ship Bush/Rice?
posted by Jacqueline at 11:48 AM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


And having seen Karl Rove speak in person, I'm pretty sure dude had a serious unrequited crush on his boss.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:48 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]




Bush/Rove wingfic stat.
posted by vuron at 11:54 AM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


California has implemented a new primary system by which the top two vote getters - from either party - go on to the general.

I've heard about this over the years but I've been confused as to its purpose or why there could only be two general election candidates in the first place. Do you have any links to a good overview of what it is and what it's intended to accomplish, or just, what's the search term I would use? I'm not finding the Wikipedia article on it, if there is one.

On districting, gerrymandering as a term was coined in 1812, so while it's better than nothing for California to have made small incremental steps in the 21st century towards patching the current system to make drawing districts a fairer process and thus maybe have begun to remedy a problem that was recognized before it was a state, this kind of points to the issue being addressed by incremental means some time around 1000 years from now.

I think that people shouldn't let themselves be dissuaded from making these fundamental problems with our democracy an issue, if they'd like to see more progress on it. There isn't any real reason why for example a group that makes up circa 15% of the population, be they Libertarians, black Americans, Latinos, mainstream Catholics, or anyone else, shouldn't be able to directly obtain about 15% percent of the political power or more if they agree on issues and support the same politicians, rather than being fragmented by complicated and changing geography-based rules into smaller groups only possibly having a diluted influence over about 50% of the political power through one of just two parties.

On the other hand, woo hoo for one of our ~50%-political-power blocs finally and appropriately being electorally represented for the highest office by a woman!
posted by XMLicious at 12:06 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I realized, as I was sort of grossed out by Trump sticking his greasy mug in the folds of Old Glory, that while the flag really got on my nerves during the Bush years, I kinda stop minding it when we had Obama around.
posted by angrycat at 12:16 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


California's 2010 Ballot Initiative that instituted "top-two" open primaries.
posted by eyesontheroad at 12:20 PM on June 11, 2016


Yes, I read that about half the people who attended are not voting for Trump and Meg Whitman said she is not only voting for Hillary Clinton. she might even donate to her campaign

Meg Whitman Likens Donald Trump to Fascists at Republican Retreat
posted by homunculus at 12:41 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


In addition to the online rally about how the entire hopelessly corrupt electoral system must be replaced because Sanders lost, and obviously that's not right, now I'm getting emails to sign petitions to do away with the superdelegates. Yeah, because that's what's wrong with America, that's the problem with voting; not the integrity of the voting machines, not gerrymandering, not taking away people's vote, it's really the party safety check that hasn't been invoked and doesn't change anything, but could have, if the stars aligned and Phil saw his shadow. We need to fix that.
posted by bongo_x at 12:57 PM on June 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


I suspect that a lot of Republican women are going to cross over and vote for Hillary given the opportunity. They might not even be willing to admit it to pollers but I see a lot of middle aged women who are pretty conservative in most areas that view this as a historic opportunity to break a ceiling. They might not like Hillary or her politics but it could be a couple of decades before the Republicans are willing to go with a female nominee.

Trump of course because he is so overtly racist and overtly sexist amplifies the divide even further. This is not compassionate conservative rhetoric but full on nativist sentiment that not even the most security conscious soccer mom is going to want to defend.
posted by vuron at 1:03 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


Anyone doubting that publicly supporting Clinton may bring an attack brigade to one's social media presence has only to take a peek at the comments on Elizabeth Warren's Facebook page.

(Maybe don't do that; it's depressing.)
posted by salix at 1:18 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


I wonder if they'll turn on Sanders himself when he endorses Clinton. My impression is that they will; this is not a rational anti-Clinton movement based on policy, it's a rabid misogynistic mob.
posted by Justinian at 1:22 PM on June 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


There isn't any real reason why for example a group that makes up circa 15% of the population, be they Libertarians, black Americans, Latinos, mainstream Catholics, or anyone else, shouldn't be able to directly obtain about 15% percent of the political power or more if they agree on issues and support the same politicians, rather than being fragmented by complicated and changing geography-based rules into smaller groups only possibly having a diluted influence over about 50% of the political power through one of just two parties.

But these groups aren't monolithic and, while identity politics are important, power doesn't break down perfectly along these lines. Libertarians were booing their nominee at their own convention. Catholics pretty much vote like their economic and geographic peers.

While geography can be and has, through gerrymandering, been used to dilute political power, it is also an important component of representational democracy. Having specific individuals who represent your district is an important part of the system, both to ensure that every area has specific advocates (or, more cynically, to shovel pork to your district), and to hold individual politicians accountable and make them accessible to voters. It also makes local grassroots campaigns possible; a statewide campaign is much more expensive and difficult to run than a local district campaign.
posted by zachlipton at 1:23 PM on June 11, 2016


Feb 26, 1996 - Hating Hillary by Henry Louis Gates:
It is often said that in ancient times a man who stood accused of breaking an urn that he’d borrowed from a neighbor was permitted to make the following tripartite defense: that it was already broken when he borrowed it, that it wasn’t broken when he returned it, and that he never borrowed it in the first place. The popular prosecution of the First Lady’s character has availed itself of a similar latitude. In the course of a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person.
Clinton's Nomination: a Feminist Milestone? by Mahroh Jahangiri and Dana Bolger:
A Clinton nomination is a milestone if all that matters is how high a woman can rise within an oppressive power structure. Indeed, to suggest that an intersectional feminist lens can allow for a celebration of empire and violence is simply, as Alex Press writes, to invoke the language of the left without “placing these words back in the context from which they came: the struggle against capital and for the oppressed.” Further, to suggest, as many have, that some women of color’s support of Clinton implies the support of an intersectional movement is to uncritically link identity to political ideology.
I’ll say this for Hillary Clinton: she certainly has nerve
By Danielle Norwood, a co-founder of WORD:
Hillary Clinton does not represent us. She has never been part of our struggle, she has never supported our struggle, and she is not a product of our struggle. WORD denounces Hillary Clinton’s callous, self-serving propaganda, her deceitful tactics and her shameful politics. The struggle for women’s rights continues, and will continue no matter how many rich white woman get elected to public office.

Michael Arnovitz in a long Facebook post:
To conservatives she is a radical left-wing insurgent who has on multiple occasions been compared to Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Kremlin’s long-time Chief of Ideology. To many progressives (you know who you are), she is a Republican fox in Democratic sheep’s clothing, a shill for Wall Street who doesn’t give a damn about the working class. The fact that these views could not possibly apply to the same person does not seem to give either side pause. Hillary haters on the right and the left seem perfectly happy to maintain their mutually incompatible delusions about why she is awful. The only thing both teams seem to share is the insistence that Hillary is a Machiavellian conspirator and implacable liar, unworthy of society’s trust.
posted by bardophile at 1:30 PM on June 11, 2016 [27 favorites]


But I've been visualizing the Overton Window on a football field recently - mostly because I think it's useful for me to consider Clinton's approach as being one of short runs and quick dump passes and Sanders wants to throw a bomb downfield on every play.

On the other hand, this is the year with an NBA season dominated by insane and brutal three-pointers.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:38 PM on June 11, 2016


In a less media-saturated world, Trump's flag hug would become his Dukakis moment. But he is a 24/7 bizarrerie factory, and it works in the way that the Gish Gallop does. One single moment of transparent fakery is overwhelmed by months' worth of it.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hillary and the Horizontals - "this is going to be mostly an election about identity... The odds are that Mrs. Clinton will prevail, because the country has already moved a long way in her direction."

It's Time To Bury "Economic Anxiety" Once And For All as a Campaign Issue - "If you insist on continuing to look at this year's election through an economic lens, you'll never figure out what's going on... It's cultural, not economic. It's demographics, not paychecks. It's about not being the boss anymore. It's about lower-class white communities now exhibiting pathologies—drug abuse, low marriage rates, etc.—that were once reasons for them to look down on blacks. Really, we just need to give up on the whole "economic anxiety" argument. When something only affects whites and lacks any real economic motivation, race is a whole lot more likely to explain things than jobs."

(via: "Summary: Populism has arisen from the lower middle class, Americans abandoned not just by the Right (owned by the 1%) but the Left as well. Populists are the swing vote in modern elections. Who they choose to ally with might create a coalition that rules for another generation. It was the Left in the New Deal. And now? Either way, populism will last beyond Campaign 2016.")

Why Are White People So Pessimistic About The Economy? - "Despite an economy that has, by most conventional measures, improved by leaps and bounds since President Obama took office, Donald Trump and, to a lesser degree, Bernie Sanders have successfully tapped into a deep well of anger and fear about the country’s economic direction. But that anger is concentrated among whites; many minority voters, as the Pew survey shows, are far more optimistic."

There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That's Good News for Trump. - "The larger number of white working-class voters implies that Democrats are far more dependent on winning white working-class voters, and therefore more vulnerable to a populist candidate like Mr. Trump... There is a downside for him. The lower turnout among Hispanic and young voters implies that it's possible — even easy — to imagine a huge increase in Hispanic and youth turnout in 2016. And Mr. Obama's strength among Northern white voters raises doubts about whether the Republicans, including Mr. Trump, can assume that white working-class voters are receptive to conservative candidates."
posted by kliuless at 1:51 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That's Good News for Trump.

Harry Enten responds at 538: “Trump Isn’t Winning Enough White Voters”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:01 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


New anti-Trump ad. I bet it's fun to figure out how to spin awful Trump footage.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:02 PM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


"What would it mean to have Trump’s fingers on the nuclear button? We don't really know, but we do know this: In the atomic age, when decisions must be made very quickly, the presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy. With a single phone call, the commander in chief has virtually unlimited power to rain down nuclear weapons on any adversarial regime and country at any time. You might imagine this awesome executive power would be hamstrung with checks and balances, but by law, custom and congressional deference there may be no responsibility where the president has more absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate. There is no second-guessing by the Supreme Court. Even ordering the use of torture—which Trump infamously once said he would do, insisting the military “won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me”—imposes more legal constraints on a president than ordering a nuclear attack.

If he were president, Donald Trump—who likes to say he doesn't spend a lot of time conferring with others ("My primary consultant is myself," he declared in March)—would be free to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose."
posted by Drinky Die at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hoh, that last line of his where he's full on smarmy 80's dudebro "Well, I can't say that either" makes me just want to trade a finger for a chance to give him a swirly.
posted by angrycat at 2:27 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ms. Clinton was reported to have been so paranoid that she attempted to have the Secret Service banned from the White House and even tried to ditch her security detail once.

Given that there have been a half dozen books with Secret Service agents literally betraying their confidence, it is hardly appropriate to call Clinton paranoid.

Not that I believe a word of these tell-all books. Secret Service agents come from a quasi-military and law enforcement background and tend to be very conservative politically. A few of them may have a political ax to grind.
posted by JackFlash at 2:31 PM on June 11, 2016 [19 favorites]


They're also not exactly boy scouts. Remember all those scandals with the Secret Service a couple years ago? It seemed like every other week there was a new scandal involving hookers and blow.
posted by Justinian at 2:43 PM on June 11, 2016 [12 favorites]


What would it mean to have Trump’s fingers on the nuclear button? We don't really know, but we do know this: In the atomic age, when decisions must be made very quickly, the presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy.

When every second counts, you want a President with the longest fingers possible so that they can hit the button just that much sooner. SKELETON 2016!
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


The 25th amendment applies when the president is being batshit insane demanding we nuke Russia against the advice of the JCS, right? Right?
posted by Talez at 2:56 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Please don't quote more than a couple paragraphs of a linked article. Also, guys, check at least a little bit up the thread to see if your article has already been posted, especially if it's a few days old.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:01 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Bob Poe is running for Congress as a Dem in Florida's 10th Congressional district. He is also living with HIV.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:16 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Why don't more women like Hillary Clinton? - "She could become America's first female president yet alienates many younger women. Why?"
Recently, the US comedian Jon Stewart noted that Clinton appears to pause slightly before giving a perfectly politically calibrated answer — a seven-second delay that seems to hint that there is a different Clinton lurking underneath, perhaps one more like the tongue-in-cheek Clinton of the 1979 interview; or one like the Wellesley College student who sarcastically penned in the acknowledgments of her senior thesis: “Although I have no ‘loving wife’ to thank for keeping the children away while I wrote, I do have many friends and teachers who have contributed to the process of thesis-writing.”

Voters may have recoiled from this mischievous, unguarded version of Clinton, the one derided for years as a feminazi. Yet the great irony is that in this election, more than any other, that candid, sharp-tongued Clinton may be exactly the kind of candidate young voters want — and perhaps the one who has the best chance of skewering Trump in the upcoming debates...

A few weeks ago, I emailed a friend, a 25-year-old fierce Clinton sceptic and Sanders supporter, the clip of Clinton’s nearly four-decades-old interview with Arkansas public TV. She loved it.

“I like that she is repeatedly, politely and seemingly genuinely saying, let the haters hate — I still work at my badass job and I kept my last name even if it is 1979,” she wrote back immediately.
Bernie or Bust: where to now for the Sanders revolution? - "While some have suggested that Mrs Clinton could appease Mr Sanders' supporters by selecting either him or fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, some Sanders supporters said that such a move would turn them off two politicians revered as life-long progressive stalwarts. 'Elizabeth Warren and Bernie are kind of like rebel politicians. They are the pit bulls of the Democratic Party', Ms Frisco said. 'For them to join Hillary in the White House would kind of make a lot of Bernie supporters feel like they sold out'... Ms Frisco said she was preparing to meet close to 100 Sanders supporters in Harlem on Saturday, as they prepared what would be their next steps. While they had considered embarking on bigger projects such as pushing for free college education or universal healthcare — two key Sanders policy platforms — for now they have decided to focus on tackling more specific, election-related problems, such as automatic voter registration, the elimination of superdelegates and broader election reforms, Ms Frisco said. 'We decided we're stronger to stay together as a group and tackle the structural flaws rather than tackling one issue at a time', Ms Frisco added."

Barack Obama mobilises for Hillary Clinton victory to seal legacy - "Buoyed by an approval rating that is now about 50 per cent, Mr Obama is likely to become the first president in recent times to play a prominent role in the election campaign for his successor... Only two years ago, Mr Obama found himself shunned by many of the Democratic party's candidates in the 2014 midterm elections. However, according to Gallup, the president's approval rating is now 53 per cent, compared with the low-40s it was at for most of 2014. Christopher Wlezien at the University of Texas and Robert Erikson from Columbia University have calculated that in all but one of the past 16 elections, the sitting president's party won the popular vote if his approval rating was above 48 per cent in the second quarter. 'Presidential elections, especially in the US, are a referendum on the incumbent', says Mr Wlezien. 'It is a choice about whether you want another four years.' "

US election: When the gloves come off - "The Clinton camp had long been confident that Mr Trump's campaign would eventually crash over his harsh rhetoric about women, disabled people, war heroes, Muslims and Hispanics. But she has taken a more aggressive stance after recognising that it is no longer enough to hope that his divisive campaign will simply implode... The new approach comes after weeks in which she seemed unsure about how to go after Mr Trump. Recent polls showing that he posed a stronger-than-expected challenge in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida served as a 'wake-up call', says a person close to the Clinton campaign... But Mrs Clinton is struggling badly with young voters, who have flocked to Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist. On Tuesday, she congratulated Mr Sanders for an 'extraordinary campaign' while calling on his supporters to 'remember all that unites us'. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that 24 per cent of liberals said they would vote for Mr Trump over Mrs Clinton, a rise of 8 points over the past three months. Fifteen per cent of Barack Obama voters from 2012 also expressed a preference for the New York tycoon."
posted by kliuless at 3:34 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


A recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that 24 per cent of liberals said they would vote for Mr Trump over Mrs Clinton, a rise of 8 points over the past three months. Fifteen per cent of Barack Obama voters from 2012 also expressed a preference for the New York tycoon."

24 percent of young people think being a liberal is cool but have no fucking idea on what it's actually about. Sure! I'll vote for the most diametrically opposite candidate to liberalism out of spite!
posted by Talez at 3:55 PM on June 11, 2016 [17 favorites]


I think it's fair to say that if you vote for Trump you are not a liberal regardless of what you call yourself.
posted by Justinian at 4:02 PM on June 11, 2016 [22 favorites]


zachlipton - I'm not saying that there can't be any advantage to voting along geographic lines, I'm just saying it should be possible to choose to not do that but to combine electoral power in other ways, especially when you are almost certainly not going to be able to participate in the drawing of those geographic lines. It seems like circular reasoning to offer as evidence the fact that groups which can't vote collaboratively across geographic lines with voting power proportional to their size have not done so, as support for why they don't need to be able to.

I actually live in a small state, so I benefit a great deal from the established system of geographic compartmentalization and weighting. So if it's really impossible to change anything even starting at the state level or if it's that we have to wait some number of further centuries for incremental improvements... well if it's got to be that way then keeping the status quo is not going to disadvantage me personally.

It just seems bizarre to me that it could be optimum or unchangeable that in our system you can have a solid 15% or more of the electorate in favor of a cause or party, but if they're evenly spread across voting districts they can't get 15% of all elected offices or even 15% of state legislature seats, but in fact would expect to get 0% of anything. (At least that's how it works in a first-past-the-post system where the opposing existing parties are the size of the Republican and Democratic parties, right?)

Fundamental flaws in our democracy we don't bother to fix decade after decade and century after century give me a sense of foreboding in the face of someone like Trump, who actually seems like a fairly superficial and not particularly competent demagogue compared to future people who might try to replicate his success. With enormous, entrenched, thoroughly-integrated-with-all-other-power-structures political parties who get to draw all those lines and which all political impetus gets funneled into lest a faction or startup political movement falls short of the FPTP, it starts to look like an awful lot of eggs to keep in two baskets.
posted by XMLicious at 4:02 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]




It just seems bizarre to me that it could be optimum or unchangeable that in our system you can have a solid 15% or more of the electorate in favor of a cause or party, but if they're evenly spread across voting districts they can't get 15% of all elected offices or even 15% of state legislature seats, but in fact would expect to get 0% of anything. (At least that's how it works in a first-past-the-post system where the opposing existing parties are the size of the Republican and Democratic parties, right?)

What's the alternative then? The obvious ones all require at-large elections rather than districts. At-large elections also inherently benefit the most establishment candidates and major parties who can afford to run huge, say, statewide campaigns instead of just convincing the smaller electorate in a particular district.

The fact that representation is proportional by geography is not inherently a fatal flaw in our democracy, and efforts like redirecting reform or ranked choice voting within districts can help to deal with some of the negative effects. It is, absolutely a choice, to divide the vote by districts, and it's one we should discuss the pros and cons of, but there are advantages to it that extend beyond "it keeps the major parties in power."
posted by zachlipton at 4:32 PM on June 11, 2016


At-large elections also inherently benefit the most establishment candidates and major parties who can afford to run huge, say, statewide campaigns instead of just convincing the smaller electorate in a particular district.

With at large multi member constituency elections and preferential voting a party that polls low might actually get some seats.
posted by Talez at 4:39 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Indelible Stain of Donald Trump
In a recent interview, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, said that whether or not Mr. Trump believes in limited government, “he’s not going to change the Republican Party,” adding that “he’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party.”
To be fair, the Republicans haven't been about limited government for four decades so it'd be impossible for Trump to change that aspect of the Republican party.
posted by Talez at 4:46 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


"What's the alternative then? The obvious ones all require at-large elections rather than districts."

One alternative is called "top up," where you apportion 80% of the seats in the legislature geographically, and the remaining 20% are at-large "top up" seats assigned proportionally to parties that meet a baseline threshhold (according to various schemes to achieve either proportionality for the whole body, or for just the top-up seats). Like it's conceivable you could increase the House to 501 members and have those extra 66 seats handed out on a nationwide basis, based on presidential voting preferences, to party-listed candidates proportional to their percentage of the presidential vote if they met a minimum threshhold of 5% or something.

It's not necessarily a GOOD idea, but there are a large variety of schemes out there, some of which are only theoretical and others that have been tried in practice.

(I actually live in one of just a handful of jurisdictions in the US where we elected a mixed-member city council, with five district representatives elected geographically and five at-large (and a citywide mayor for the 11th vote), and we have a very complicated vote-splitting scheme that's unique in the US. It's meant to increase minority representation which, in forty years, it hasn't yet.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:50 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Hey guys - any interest in the religious/Evangelical anti-Trump articles I'm finding? I don't think they would convince anyone here, but they are fascinating artifacts and might help convince friends/relatives.
posted by corb at 4:57 PM on June 11, 2016 [27 favorites]


I know I'm interested in pretty much anything you're willing to share about the Republicans' response to the Trump debacle.
posted by Weeping_angel at 5:01 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Hold on a second...(Puts on a big bib labeled NUMMY TEARz) ok hit me Corb
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:11 PM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]



Hey guys - any interest in the religious/Evangelical anti-Trump articles I'm finding? I don't think they would convince anyone here, but they are fascinating artifacts and might help convince friends/relatives.


yes
post them
post them all
posted by lalochezia at 5:15 PM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


Trump addresses Evangelicals: “I know many, many, very successful people,” the billionaire businessman told the audience. “The happiest people are the people that have that great religious feel, and that incredible marriage, children.”

I have no idea how any thinking Evangelical with a brain in their head can say to themselves, "You know, I like Trump because he agrees with me about this great religious feel that I have."
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 5:23 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


Massively upvoted thread on /r/SandersForPresident: Bernie is staying in the race because "Bernie knows things we don't know. And it probably relates to Hillary Clinton's FBI investigation. I bet Obama knows things we don't know as well."

People are incredibly hopeful that an indictment is coming down very soon -- and that this will deliver the nomination to Sanders.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 5:27 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also: those who were raised in Evangelical/Fundamentalist churches will instantly recognize that accusing them of "being religious" is actually quite an insult.

He's so tone-deaf it's unbelievable.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 5:30 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Bernie folks on social media talk about the Coming Indictment like its the Rapture. The chosen will be saved! The non-believers cast down!
posted by Justinian at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2016 [17 favorites]


corb, I'd also be interested. In the dark days of the mid 2000s, I subscribed to American Conservative, and would absolutely eat up any rhetoric on the Right calling out the Bush administration. Very reassuring at times to know there are some on the Right who hold on to decency.

Speaking of that, the strangest thing for me personally this campaign season is this newfound respect for Romney I seem to have developed. Never ever thought that would happen.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:42 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


I think the reality is that a lot of Sanders support was relatively soft and was as much influenced by his perceived outsider status as there was alignment with his political positions.

Considering there is virtually no overlap between Sanders and Trump on policy issues I can only assume that those people that are threatening to vote for Trump because Sanders was not nominated really weren't supporting Sanders on ideological grounds.

Yes there are probably a small number of ultra-left accelerationists that see a long dark winter of a Trump presidency as delivering a new progressive spring revolution and who think that Clinton will just offer a smiling faced betrayal of liberal possessions to business centrists. Maybe they are even correct but I feel like making the decision of trying to pursue the possible liberal revolution as a consequence of a fascist winter is fundamentally short sighted and unlikely to pay off in the long run and in the meantime it's liable to result in a very large number of Americans being substantially worse off.

I admit that I'm really insulated by privilege so there is some appeal of playing for the long term golden future instead of what is liable to be bronze in the near term but I can't really stomach putting a whole load of less privileged people in a bad position in order to reach my long term objectives. Perhaps that's cowardice and rationalizing on my end because in the end going with a liberal incrementalist is also likely to protect most of the gains I already have whereas someone in a less privileged position might be willing to go all in in order to achieve a long term disruption to the capitalist system.

Personally I am also a bit of a pessimist and I simply don't believe that there is any real appetite for revolution in the form that some on the left would like. I think the reality is yes people are cognizant that they are probably doing worse than previous generations did and there is an increasing percentage of economic surplus going to the economic elite but the reality is that I think as much as people are hurting they still feel the desire to hold on to what they have even if it's a home they paid too much for and a 401k that won't actually cover their retirement or any number of materialistic things that people use as a way of showing that they are successful.

Furthermore economic elites have a degree of using their money in a way that was virtually unheard of even a century ago. Hypermobile capital allows those who control the means of production to relocate their capital with fairly minimal disruptions. Yes manufacturing centers still require a massive allocation of resources and moving a factory from the US to China isn't completely without risks and disruption but the simple fact of the matter is that the average US worker has seen their competitive advantages disappear in many industries due to overseas competition and there really is no way of bringing back those jobs without resorting to trade protectionism that might result in deeper job losses than we've already experienced.

I do think that there is a role for government and labor to function collectively as a brake on the unfettered power of the economic elites and things like increasing the tax burden on elites through progressive taxation are extremely useful but it also needs to be tempered by the fact that despite the illusions of loyalty that many economic elites have to the US the overriding concern of the capitalist system is to maximize profits and there is a limit on what economic elites will tolerate before removing capital from the economy.

There is definitely a role for socialist and progressives to shape both current and future US policy but it needs to be cognizant of the limitations of our position at the current time. People power is an incredibly valuable resource that the left is becoming very capable of mobilizing but that people power has a finite duration (people can do Occupy for a time but not indefinitely) and it needs to focused on achievable goals rather than very grandiose ideals with limited means of actually being made manifest. There is room for a MLK type that presenting a compelling vision of a more perfect union but it also needs to have clearly defined short term and mid term goals.

That's where I felt Sanders squandered an opportunity because it's relatively easy to articulate why things are broken but it's hard to come up with clearly defined and achievable objectives of how to reach those goals in the short term without relying on simplistic explanations like "revolution".
posted by vuron at 5:54 PM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


I did a search for Trump over on Patheos, hoping to find some Evangelical views, and found this instead:
...the Otherworld is bleeding over into the ordinary world in a way nobody alive has ever seen. ... I’m talking about Gods with their own agendas for this world. I’m talking about angry ghosts, restless spirits, and meddlesome demons. I’m talking about dead who are just as much assholes as they were in life. I’m talking about fae that bear no resemblance to Tinkerbell, who view humans as annoying invaders and tasty snacks.
That would explain some things.
posted by clawsoon at 5:57 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think that the evangelicals that have bought into the modern gospel of prosperity bullshit that is so common in many of the megachurches especially those on the religious networks are more or less a lost cause. For this branch of evangelicals the simple fact that Trump is supposedly extremely wealthy and successful is a validation that he is a virtuous man because god would not let a sinner prosper like that. So they will be willing to overlook his womanizing and other negative character defects.

I think for other branches of evangelicals I think you can probably focus on other aspects of their faith as a way of having a conversation about how Trump hardly shows a Christlike benevolence but this is a dangerous area to deal with unless you really know that evangelical well and understand their theological viewpoints.

For the old school single issue anti-abortion evangelical and there are still a ton of these I think you've pretty much got a hard sell because the underlying concern about the fates of fetuses tends to trump anything else and basically the Republicans have carved out a very solid position as the party that supports the anti-choice platform and even if Trump is wishy-washy on the issue it's clear that Clinton is solidly pro-choice. These voters are also unlikely to support Libertarians because while they might be economically conservative they are also clearly authoritarian in terms of policing a woman's body.
posted by vuron at 6:04 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Okay - so one of the "moderately big names" pushing the DelegateRevolt is called Steve Deace - from what I can gather he's a talk show host that seems moderately respected, with a large twitter following. And he's written a really interesting article, that also dissects Trump specifically from the perspective of the 'Alpha Male' loving types he's pandering to, as well as seriously hard hitting questions like
"Do you really believe you could look Jesus in the eye at your judgment and justify supporting such a man for the most powerful office in the world?"
Also hilarity from Republican Twitter: new nickname for Trump, "Little Gloves", after "Little Boots" Caligula
posted by corb at 6:08 PM on June 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


Honestly I think aside from the truly bizarre photoshopland, I'm finding rebel-Republican Twitter weirdly comforting: sure, half the tweets are like "Trump is secretly a Democrat" but half of them are also "he's a racist and immoral".
posted by corb at 6:13 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


Also hilarity from Republican Twitter: new nickname for Trump, "Little Gloves", after "Little Boots" Caligula

Donald Trump has 'fascinating parallels' with Caligula, says historian

A new Emperor for a new century
posted by homunculus at 6:23 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Massively upvoted thread on /r/SandersForPresident: Bernie is staying in the race because "Bernie knows things we don't know. And it probably relates to Hillary Clinton's FBI investigation. I bet Obama knows things we don't know as well."

Yes. This perfectly explains why Obama met with Sanders and then promptly endorsed Clinton. Those facts fit perfectly with him knowing that Hillary Clinton will be charged with treason next week.

Give me a break.
posted by zachlipton at 6:27 PM on June 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


The Bernie folks on social media talk about the Coming Indictment like its the Rapture. The chosen will be saved! The non-believers cast down!

We Libertarians are also hoping for the Rapture Coming Indictment, but *after* the convention. Because we're pretty sure that most Democrats would pick Johnson over Trump.

(Plus I just enjoy seeing powerful figures brought down by the justice system. There's not a lot I like about living in Virginia but sending governors to prison is pretty nifty.)
posted by Jacqueline at 6:34 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Trump is secretly a Democrat"

I still like to fantasize that his entire campaign in one long troll on the GOP.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:35 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


r/sfp and r/politics are basically like the x-files and lone gunmen conspiracy mytharc episodes turned up to 11.

There have always been a fair amount of people on the left (and right) that are firmly convinced that there is a massive conspiracy lurking behind the scenes but the proliferation of social media networks have allowed what was previously seen as the ravings of "madmen" to reach a far larger audience.

Whether it's infowars style right wing conspiracy nuts or left wing "the man is totally out to get us" conspiracy nuts there is a way of getting your message out and unfortunately due to the economic uncertainty that grips some many members of modern society a fertile ground for the messaging these people send.

And whether it's people telling you that the banksters are behind your suffering or that Mexicans are taking your jobs it's being used to fuel widespread distrust in the government and government's role in shaping society. Scapegoating is a nice way to transfer responsibility to someone else because now you are a victim rather being responsible and the responsibility for fixing things rests on someone else. It is also incredibly dangerous because scapegoating can cause a ton of damage to the people being scapegoated.
posted by vuron at 6:36 PM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


From the Steve Deace article: "Nor is Trump even the kind of megalomaniac Obama is, with his Soviet-era style ruthless pursuit of Marxism."

I don't care if I agree with 99% of his article. This one sentence indicates that he's either lying, is being a Hezekiah himself by knowingly speaking lies just to make the point of "hey, you can't say I like Obama, he's a ruthless Marxist [seriously?]," or utterly unhinged and driven by hatred of Obama. Each of these things means he has some profound soul searching to do so long as he keeps clothing himself in the disguise of "even-headed Christian." I'll find my "reasonable Evangelical" elsewhere, thank you Steve Deace.

This is not in any way to say that corb isn't doing a fantastic job sharing links like this with us, but let's not pretend that what Deace and his fellow pharisees write are in any way legitimately Christ-like.
posted by chimaera at 6:37 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Because we're pretty sure that most Democrats would pick Johnson over Trump.

Yeah, but that's totally not going to happen. Because my conspiracy-minded Democrat friend, a very trustworthy source by the way, is confident that the indictment will happen but Biden will become the Democratic candidate with Warren as VP.
posted by FJT at 6:40 PM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


vuron I agree that trying accelerationism by making things worse in the hopes (despite it never once happening in all history) that after it gets worse people will vote en masse for a Leftist agenda is foolhardy and comes from a position of privilege.

Where I disagree extremely is with your position that hypermobile capital means that we basically have to capitulate to the billionaires, that there must be hard limits on Leftism, for fear that they'll take their money and go somewhere else.

The thing is, their land is here, their factories are here, their mines are here. Let them leave if they want, but we can seize their holdings if that's what it takes and leave them holding some useless numbers in a bank account instead of the actual stuff that really makes them rich. Money is nice, but ultimately it is a symbol of wealth and the actual wealth itself is not quite so mobile as the money is.

Wealth can be repatriated if the billionaires try to pack up their toys and leave.

That's a worst case scenario and I'd certainly rather they just submitted to the necessary sheering to get the economy fixed. But if they want to make it a real fight I think they will find that the world isn't quite so William Gibson, billionaires can do anything, as they like to imagine.
posted by sotonohito at 6:41 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


At-large elections also inherently benefit the most establishment candidates and major parties who can afford to run huge, say, statewide campaigns instead of just convincing the smaller electorate in a particular district.

Is this something which has been verified again since social media or simply the internet have existed? The way information about a candidate spreads seems as though it's going to be much more lateral and less centralized than it has been during most of the history of political science.

I guess I might also be unimpressed by the idea of this being a real obstacle to 15%-of-the-population-sized groups obtaining direct representation because in my state a state-wide campaign is anything but huge. It seems like there might be a variety of remedies that could be applied in a larger state (plus, y'know, unlimited money in politics, which it seems doubtful we're actually going to get rid of) but I'm sure that's been analyzed extensively.

I wonder if working out the details of how smaller groups might be able to directly obtain elected representation will suddenly be a problem worth devoting resources to solving once the country overall flips over to majority-minority in a few decades.
posted by XMLicious at 6:42 PM on June 11, 2016


I'll also add that there's a significant difference between scapegoating and correctly identifying the source of a problem.

It is not scapegoating to note that the reason people are poorer is because the very rich are hoarding all the money, that's simply a correct diagnosis of the problem.

If you disagree, could you please tell me what you think the actual problem is that I'm merely scapegoating to avoid discussing?
posted by sotonohito at 6:44 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wealth can be repatriated if the billionaires try to pack up their toys and leave.

Now, I think the chance that billionaires will just pack up is not remotely possible, but I think going by history if they did leave, they would be at least partially successful. Especially if they were to find a friendly country to settle down in or perhaps to carve off a nice chunk of the United States to call their own.
posted by FJT at 6:47 PM on June 11, 2016


Yeah, that Steve Deace is a hot mess of terrible theology, with a heaping side of "not acquainted with factual reality," and a dessert course of I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO MIX THESE PARTICULAR METAPHORS WHY DO YOU HATE ENGLISH? His Scripture quotes read like he was googling keywords to find quotes that fit. HOT MESS.

For more mainstream Evangelical viewpoints, Christianity Today is probably your go-to for smarter reportage and commentary. Here's Christianity Today on polling of evangelical and related Christian groups, with quotes from major evangelical leaders about not being able to vote in good conscience for either candidate; the theology of Trump (he hasn't any; it's regurgitated self-help books with Jesus slapped on, and any embrace of Trump by Evangelicals reveals a secularization of the movement); why voting third party is an abdication of Christian responsibility; here's the general politics section which has some interesting stuff in general, both reporting and opinion, like about Bernie's religious background and Ted Cruz's bridge-burning and so on. I can't immediately turn it up but they had an interesting piece that was circulating last week among my right-wing-ish pastor friends about how EVERYONE brings their identity to their jobs, and that evangelical Christians explicitly want Christians to do that, so even if you believe Judge Curiel brings his Mexican heritage into his courtroom, condemning him for it is misguided.

Of course CT is writing to and for a more educated, elite evangelical and doesn't descend into the down-and-dirty crazy theology of the fringes of the movement. Where Steve Deace lives. So while it's representative of what you'll be hearing from a lot of prominent evangelical pastors and leaders, it's not necessarily representative of the firey talking heads or of some of the people in the pews. (But they do try to REPORT on that part of the movement, so they at least talk about them in many election stories.)

"There's not a lot I like about living in Virginia but sending governors to prison is pretty nifty"

May I acquaint you with a little state called Illinois?

posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:52 PM on June 11, 2016 [16 favorites]


Me, reading MeFi to SO: "Donald Trump has 'fascinating parallels' with Caligula, says historian, it says."

SO (historian): "Really? Has he screwed his sister? Who's saying that?"

Me, following link: "Uh... Tom Holland?"

SO: "Tom Holland? He can boil his bum. He has a batchelor's degree in English and Latin. If Mary Beard says it, I'm interested. Otherwise, bum boil time."

So there you have it.
posted by Devonian at 6:53 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


Why would you boil your bum?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:57 PM on June 11, 2016


It's a requirement for a batchelors degree.
posted by museum of fire ants at 7:03 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Why would you boil your bum?
Because they're tough and gristley when they're roasted?
posted by Floydd at 7:03 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yes there are definitely people making huge sums of money in the current system but to think that they all operate in unison with some sort of overarching plan to hurt American workers is simplistic. To think that every billionaire thinks the same as every other billionaire reduces them to a stereotype when in fact the ultra-wealthy have complex motivations.

The reality is that the American worker has been complicit in the shift of power and increasing share of income garnered by the economic elites. We have collectively managed to weaken the position of labor vis-a-vis production by selecting politicians that have weakened the rights of workers in terms of collective bargaining. We have allowed retailers to undercut US based manufacturers by constantly flocking to whichever store sells goods at the lowest price. We have consistently voted against our economic self-interest by responding to dog-whistles that suggest that someone is getting something they don't deserve.

We fail to understand that a capitalist economic system maximizes returns on investment but it does not deal with generating an equitable distribution of wealth. We consistently vote against government correcting for that flaw in capitalism by consistently voting for people that promise to cut taxes (particularly progressive taxes like income taxes).

When we blame hedge fund managers and banks for taking risks when need to look at our 401ks and retirement accounts and look at how much of our wealth has been invested in funds that are always looking to create the maximum return on investment even if it means cutting corners with ethics because once again capitalism is not inherently concerned with ethics.

But unfortunately the US citizen has largely abrogated their responsibility in regards to a whole host of economic and political issues and allowed for the rise of a professional class of politicians who tend to maximize their chances of re-election and profit after retiring and we are suddenly surprised that quite often that this political class is more concerned with the economic interests of wealthy donors rather than ordinary Americans.

I think anyone who tends to offer an easy way out by blaming a class of people whether the ultra-rich or ethnic or religious minorities is engaging in a fundamentally dishonest process of telling the American voter that it's not really their fault and that they don't need to actually get educated about issues and I'll totally fix stuff for you. Granted just about every politician does this to some degree or another but I am deeply distrustful when people on the right target minorities or people on the left target economic elites.

That isn't to say that we shouldn't focus on addressing these issues but I think a more honest discussion starts from the point of view that banks and economic elites are looking to promote their own interests and that sometimes those interests conflict with the interests of ordinary Americans and that it's critical for ordinary Americans to use people power (and to a certain degree economic) power to influence policy rather than being passive spectators that only seem to care about political issues once every 4 years. Unfortunately people powered political movements required sustained effort and can often seem hard to get moving but it's critical that issues concerning economic justice don't just come up during presidential elections but that they come up all the time. Otherwise it's almost impossible to convert the number of people who believe in social and economic justice into tangible policy objectives.
posted by vuron at 7:10 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


People are incredibly hopeful that an indictment is coming down very soon -- and that this will deliver the nomination to Sanders.

Some of the Sanders supporters that show up on my fb feed are very much hoping for FBI intervention against Hillary to save Bernie's campaign. Frustratingly, most of those people should damn well know better - the FBI's involvement with the political left has historically, famously been poisonous and destructive. That any self-respecting leftie would be pulling for the g.d. FBI over Hillary shows how far gone some of these folks are.
posted by palindromic at 7:20 PM on June 11, 2016 [26 favorites]


Where did I say they were working together in some sort of cabal? Their interest just happens to be together when it comes to policies that make them ever richer. It isn't necessary for them to conspire, just to be billionaires and pursue an agenda (independently) that makes sense for billionaires.

I'll certainly agree that the average American is partially at fault too. Our nation has always been infested with that Horatio Alger bullshit, the view that we're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires and so a majority tend (to our great harm) to identify with them and their causes.

But that doesn't make the problem stop being that the rich people are hoarding all the money.

That's the problem. We need to address that, openly and clearly, and without fear of pissing them off. The question of why they're hoarding all the money, the fact that they can do so because most non-billionaires are letting them get away with it, etc are all useful and interesting things to explore, but we can't do that in any meaningful way until the core problem is acknowledged.

I fear that, like Americans tend to do with everything from climate change to civil rights, our nation will just let it slide until the situation becomes so intolerable that mass riots and protests are erupting all over. I'd rather we addressed the situation before it gets that bad.

I absolutely agree about the difficulty of people powered movements and the need for action in non-presidential election years. I think honestly addressing the core problem (some of us are hoarding all the money) might help both in GOTV efforts and in keeping the movement going. It couldn't hurt to try, could it? I mean so far we've been trying the bullshitting and talking aroudn the problem trying to be all nicey nicey and not hurt billionaire feelings approach for since before I was born and that has, correct me if I'm wrong here, gotten us not merely no progress towards solving the problem but has in fact made things worse.

So how about we try honesty and directly discussing the problem for a change? It can't possibly do worse than the triangulation and hypersensitivity to billionaire feelings approach.
posted by sotonohito at 7:24 PM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


To think that every billionaire thinks the same as every other billionaire reduces them to a stereotype when in fact the ultra-wealthy have complex motivations.

...

The reality is that the American worker has been complicit in the shift of power and increasing share of income garnered by the economic elites. We have collectively managed to weaken the position of labor vis-a-vis production by selecting politicians that have weakened the rights of workers in terms of collective bargaining. We have allowed retailers to undercut US based manufacturers by constantly flocking to whichever store sells goods at the lowest price. We have consistently voted against our economic self-interest by responding to dog-whistles that suggest that someone is getting something they don't deserve.

Odd that you are willing to condense the actions of the American worker in such a way, but assert that doing the same for billionaires would "reduce them to a stereotype."

Everyone is just responding to market forces, we have to exert control on the market to keep market forces from sending us all to the mines and scrip markets.
posted by Phyltre at 7:26 PM on June 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've been wondering if several high-profile Republicans might peel off and form a new party in the wake of Trump.

But apparently Bill Kristol is openly calling for that now, so there goes that theory.
posted by duffell at 7:29 PM on June 11, 2016 [17 favorites]


I'll also add that Kurt Vonnegut correctly identified the problem and described it in a painfully beautiful way:
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
We associate wealth with virtue, virtue with wealth.

And that has to stop.

I don't see a way to do that without plainly describing the problem. We're all so damn poor because there's a tiny number of people hoarding the money. I think the hoarders may be psychologically damaged, when someone hoards old newspaper or cats or canned goods or anything other than money we identify that as a mental disorder and urge them to seek help. We stage interventions if our loved ones begin exhibiting hoarding behavior.

Unless what they hoard is money. That mental disorder we label as a virtue. A person who has more money than they can ever possibly spend even living the most ridiculous life of luxury who endlessly seeks yet more money, is hailed as a hero. A person who has more cats than they can care for and yet endlessly seeks more cats is correctly identified as a person suffering from mental problems.

Worse, it doesn't just hurt the individual hoarder, but it hurts everyone else too.

So yes, I say call out the billionaires, they created the problem.
posted by sotonohito at 7:35 PM on June 11, 2016 [28 favorites]


I don't even understand the accelerationist argument. My grandparents were revolutionary socialists in Vienna in the late 1930s, so I'll freely admit that every discussion of what-happens-when-fascists-take-over comes pre-Godwinned for me, but I just don't see any historical precedent that suggests that fascism leads to a wonderful revolution that brings about socialist paradise. If you look at places where fascists actually did come to power, what happens is that anyone who opposes them gets killed or driven into exile or cowed into silence, and most ordinary people realize that it's a lot more fun to be a fascist in a fascist society than to be an anti-fascist, and nobody rises up in revolution, or if they do they get brutally crushed. And what comes afterwards is usually not-ideal, even if it's not nearly as bad as fascism. When things get really bad, people don't revolt. They make an accommodation with the really bad situation, or they flee, or they die. And then at some point the whole thing comes crashing down, and they lie to themselves and everyone else and pretend they resisted, but it's mostly bullshit, because the people who resisted got killed. There's something really infuriating to me about the accelerationist argument. I resent the innocence that makes it possible to believe that's how things work.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:43 PM on June 11, 2016 [65 favorites]


I resent the innocence that makes it possible to believe that's how things work.

"They won't fuck with me... I'm white!"
posted by Talez at 7:46 PM on June 11, 2016 [11 favorites]


I have long thought that Americans suffer from particularly flawed thinking about revolutions because ours went so well. I mean, George effing Washington, man -- most revolutions don't end with a literal Cincinnatus who voluntarily leaves powerful office TWICE (general of the armies, and later the presidency). If your frame of thinking about revolutions is the American Revolution, hey, that actually turned out pretty good! We got a sturdy and idealistic Constitution that created a practical form of government that mostly worked, and a bevy of idealistic and motivated and altruistic public servants who steered the country safely into democracy despite there being no road map!

Most Americans who advocate revolution are thinking THAT is the natural outcome of a revolution; they're not thinking of its twin the French Revolution ... and the Terror, and Napoleon, and so on. And that's one that eventually -- eventually! -- turned out okay! We could end up with the Russian Revolution. Or worse.

We're just not constitutionally (ba-dum-bum) suited to straight thinking about revolutions, and I do think Americans who advocate for revolution are not so much dumb as they are fairly provincial in their world view and not super-aware of history and politics outside of the US's borders.

I think we suffer a similar cultural problem in thinking about other countries' civil wars, because not that many civil wars are between members of the same socio-cultural group fighting over ideas and politics and economics; most are ethnic or religious and considerably harder to settle when the fighting ends. And this helps lead us into magical thinking about, say, Iraq.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:56 PM on June 11, 2016 [53 favorites]


OMFG, you guys! Donald Trump keeps calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas", so she bought pocahontas.com and has it redirect to her website, where the top headline is "Donald Trump can NEVER be the President." I love her so much.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:57 PM on June 11, 2016 [50 favorites]


When we blame hedge fund managers and banks for taking risks when need to look at our 401ks and retirement accounts and look at how much of our wealth has been invested in funds that are always looking to create the maximum return on investment even if it means cutting corners with ethics because once again capitalism is not inherently concerned with ethics.

But unfortunately the US citizen has largely abrogated their responsibility in regards to a whole host of economic and political issues and allowed for the rise of a professional class of politicians who tend to maximize their chances of re-election and profit after retiring and we are suddenly surprised that quite often that this political class is more concerned with the economic interests of wealthy donors rather than ordinary Americans.


This is disgusting victim blaming. There are two things responsible for the disasters of capitalism: the system, and the capitalists. The workers are not complicit in the injustices of the system that they find themselves forced to participate in. There's no visible escape for them and no viable alternative besides making do and getting by. The greatest crime of capitalism is the destruction of our powers of imagination and the narrowing of consciousness. Most people can't even imagine that another, better world is possible. The idea that because we are in a democracy we all share the blame for its depredations is the kind of bullshit elites trot out to escape responsibility. Equality on the level of civil society is a lie so long as there is gross inequality in the economic order. We might all be equal under the law but some people remain more equal than others, and they share more of the blame.
posted by dis_integration at 7:59 PM on June 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


I think it's one thing to note that wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people and another thing to note that wealth concentration tends to be the default result of the capitalist system.

When you say that banks are responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis without addressing the underlying root causes of the economic bubble (investors looking for increased ROI, American culture pushing home ownership as a critical way of generating an maintaining wealth, the constant keep up with jones competitiveness that is encouraging Americans into buying bigger and more expensive homes, etc) it becomes easy to come up with solutions that only address the symptoms of the problem such as banks are willing to engage in too many risky loans rather than address the underlying causes that generate those symptoms.

As we keep trying to address symptoms we inevitably create market distortions (I am not an neo-liberal economic purist so I don't actually mind market distortions in many cases) which can often lead to other issues. For instance it can be said that part of the issue concerning the growth of subprime mortgages has been tied to decades of economic policies that clearly encourage home ownership rather than renting. This has resulted in all sorts of market distortions and positive and negative externalities such as the rapid expansion of urban sprawls.

Every time we use government as a method for incentivizing some economic activity or correcting for a market failure it can result in unexpected consequences. Some purists see this as undermining the essential purity of the capitalist economic system but honestly I am perfectly okay with that because as I said previously capitalism is great at generating a maximum return it sucks at making sure that return is distributed in an equitable manner.

So there needs to be an equilibrium of sorts between economic engines and government that has basically been weakened to a massive degree over the last half century of Monetarist dominance over economic policy. Furthermore neo-marxist and feminist concepts of economic justice are coming into a greater degree of acceptance in some circles which is complicating the synthesis of a new economic understanding that free markets cannot be expected to create mutual advantageous outcomes despite the stubborn insistence of some economists that pareto-optimal outcomes are possible (at least in theory).

Unfortunately the reality is that for the vast majority of voters economics is basically a foreign language which I suspect is in part by design (economists in many programs and journals basically hide almost all of their arguments inside of cryptic math equations in order to feel more scientific and economists that tend to write in a more accessible manner seem to not get hired in many programs). The unfortunate result is that we shift the burden of understanding economic policies to the technocratic elite aka the policy wonks. While this is not necessarily a bad thing it can result in negative externalities being minimized by policy experts which leads to false expectations about economic policies. Furthermore think tanks are increasingly the method through which economic elites operate and dominate economic policy discussions. How often do we tend to drill down into an article in which a think tank expert condones or attacks an economic or political positions and find out who the source of funding behind that think tank is.

I do think that it's critical that we address economic disparity in the US but I also think that it needs to be done in an informed manner and many of the attacks against economic elites don't seem to propose particularly useful solutions or they propose solutions that would greatly incentivize non-compliance with the regulatory and tax environment.
posted by vuron at 8:04 PM on June 11, 2016 [8 favorites]


that Steve Deace is a hot mess of terrible theology

Yeah, to clarify, I don't think Steve Deace is the Principled Evangelical we should all be watching - most of my fascination with this article is that this is targeting the very people who are torn between Trump and other possibilities - maybe vulgar evangelicals is a reasonable term? The people who are very strong in their faith but also not particularly educated. Low-education voters are both particularly susceptible to voting for Trump, and also tend to associate more with the grassroots folk who have a lot of time on their hands and likely to be engaged with the evangelical volunteer apparatus.

In terms of the Obama=Marxist stuff - I think that it's important to remember that people here on Metafilter, regardless of political persuasion, are more educated, by and large, than the general populace - whether self-educated or college-educated, we read a lot and use words a lot. So people like me can say, "Okay, Obama probably is further along on a long, long line that leads from my political beliefs to Marxism", or "The New Deal was influenced by the amount of Marxist sentiment in the country at the time, and Obama views the New Deal fondly", without saying "Obama is a Marxist." But I think for people who don't really do a lot of study of what Marxism is, or was, they view any attempt to take from the rich and give to the poor as specifically Marxist. It's not, I think, an intentional mistake - I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how Marxism is a specific brand of wealth-redistributionism, not associated with every aspect of it.
posted by corb at 8:24 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is it victim blaming to suggest that the the gambler that chooses to gamble at vegas despite knowing that the odds favor the house is at least partially responsible? Are the people that watch a whole row of slot machines waiting to play an overdue slot machine engaging in unethical behavior even though they are basically using other people's money to increase their chances of winning?

We know that the current economic system is "rigged" to protect the house and that some people are in effect playing with other people's money to increase their return. We understand that this is the fundamental nature of the current economic system. It is fundamentally designed to create a return on investment it is not designed to make sure that the return on investment is equitably shared.

So we understand that the gambler in Vegas is operating in a system that is fundamentally structured in a way that should result in them losing but we are somehow surprised when the overarching economic system that we are operating under is structured in much the same way? Or that economic elites would attempt to use their economic might in a way to structure it where they have even more strength and can generate even larger returns on investment?

I really don't think it's victim blaming to suggest that when you know the system is rigged that you try to change it. I agree that trying to drop out of the system altogether is probably not a doable scenario for most people but I do think it's possible to use collective people power as a method for tempering the economic might of elites.

However all too often Americans have been convinced to vote against our economic interests by appealing to our base natures because it's much more tolerable to be a poor white person if you have an entire class of minorities that you can victimize.

I don't think it's victim blaming to point to the massive percentage of white males that tend to vote for Republicans in election after election despite the fact that most are not and will not ever be members of the 1% as victim blaming. I truly believe that we tend to get the democracy we deserve and as long as our democracy tends to be predicated on victimizing groups whether women, or minorities or whomever we will continue to have a system in which some people will continually support maintaining a status quo that enforces economic inequality even if the people voting for that system are also victimized just a diminished rate.

Ultimately I think it's incumbent on all of us to realize that we are all playing a part of the economic game and that the only way to change the outcomes are to change the underlying way in which the game is played. In short hate the game not the player.
posted by vuron at 8:31 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


To be fair, a lot of self-identified socialists don't really understand what Marxism is either. Bernie is talking about a $15 minimum wage but has no plans (afaik) to help workers seize the means of production, which would be *actual socialism* and not just reforming capitalism.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 8:34 PM on June 11, 2016 [23 favorites]


" In short hate the game not the player."

A friend of mine, in response to this axiom (or its inverse) once said: "I don't hate the player or the game, I hate the rules."
posted by aspersioncast at 8:39 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Actually, this goes even deeper: a lot of our self-conceptions and self-definitions in American politics are totally off or, in many ways, the opposite of what they are supposed to be. e.g., "conservatives" who believe that the Free Market is, in itself, some kind of bastion of conservative virtue when, in reality, free-market economics have historically been enormously corrosive to traditional morality and traditional social relations.

It actually wasn't until .... probably the mid 1800's ... that people started associating free trade with middle-class values -- and only then because the middle class happened to gain the most from free trade. Before then, free-marketeers were considered wild-eye utilitarians who wanted to abolish the past and institute a kind of godless and mechanical progressivism.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 8:40 PM on June 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


"I don't hate the player or the game, I hate the rules."

That's... that's the game, though.
posted by Etrigan at 8:46 PM on June 11, 2016 [20 favorites]


From that Trump's Finger On The Nuclear Button article:

At a reception in New York City around 1990, he ran into the U.S. START negotiator, Ambassador Richard Burt. According to Burt, Trump expressed envy of Burt’s position and proceeded to offer advice on how best to cut a “terrific” deal with the Soviets. Trump told Burt to arrive late to the next negotiating session, walk into the room where his fuming counterpart sits waiting impatiently, remain standing and looking down at him, stick his finger into his chest and say “Fuck you!”

This would be hilarious if it weren't terrifying.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:56 PM on June 11, 2016 [25 favorites]


Add Richard Burt to the list of people who prevented nuclear war by not doing what they were told to do.
posted by Etrigan at 9:21 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Frankly, I'm pretty sure that Trump has no idea how to actually negotiate. Paying companies to stick your name on some of their steaks is basically pay-for-service, not dealmaking. Over the top threats and abuse are just going to have the other party leave the table, which is a failure of negotiation.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:28 PM on June 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


But I think for people who don't really do a lot of study of what Marxism is, or was, they view any attempt to take from the rich and give to the poor as specifically Marxist.

So Deace is still either foolish or lying by exaggeration. His point would not have been any weaker had it changed from Soviet/Marxist to Big Government/Leftist, certainly to an audience who considers those things more or less interchangeable. But he chose the former for a reason, both right after and right before laying claim to Christ. This is all not to mention a theology of rapacity that makes someone favor wealth concentration and oppose economic equality. If anyone wants to know what Jesus was talking about when God separates the sheep from the goats, behold: Steve Deace, goat.
posted by chimaera at 9:50 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


The gambler choosing to gamble in Vegas thing isn't working for me... aren't you actually saying hate the game not the casino, vuron? And always only hate the game no matter what the casino does, even if it completely violates all casino regulations and after exchanging your money for chips takes your money and uses it to unsuccessfully attempt to dig a gold mine directly underneath the casino building, so that the building collapses while you're still inside playing, and so not only did they never have the money they'd have owed you on hand if you'd actually won, you're also dead because the building collapsed on you.

You're saying that basically it's the player's fault as much as the casino's... because whatever the casino does is de facto part of the game? Sort of like Nixon's "If the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
posted by XMLicious at 10:29 PM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sort of like Nixon's "If the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Which does seem to be the de-facto state. With Bush walking away from his clear violations of 18 USC 371 and 18 USC 1001, it's pretty clear that while ON PAPER their actions appear to be unlawful, the office of the President ( and his partners in crime ) is above the law.

That's why all the talk about indictments is all horseshit. The Law isn't applied to the Wealthy Ruling Class.
posted by mikelieman at 12:46 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I would not have thought Weiner's sense of humor was that advanced, tbh.

I can't defend Weiner after what he did, but one of the reasons his fall from grace was so tragic is because he was fucking ferocious as an advocate, as well as being incredibly quick and funny at the same time. He just constantly owned his political opponents in verbal jousts. Pisses me off just thinking about how he destroyed his own credibility by being a creepster predator.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:01 AM on June 12, 2016 [22 favorites]


However all too often Americans have been convinced to vote against our economic interests by appealing to our base natures because it's much more tolerable to be a poor white person if you have an entire class of minorities that you can victimize.
Is this the same as it being a lot more tolerable to be cognisant of one's impotence in changing the system if one has an entire class of people to look down on?

Divorcing the Patriarchy and White-Supremacy from straight white males would genuinely go along way to show they are the tools of a larger system which has the twin goals of perpetuating itself and cementing the power structures we have. I think this could explain a lot of the Sanders campaign's tone-deafness as well as the small overlap between Bernie Bros and Trump. They're not wrong....

The problem though is fuck that noise. If someone's idea of revolution is patting the non-white, non-straight, non-male victims on the head and asking them to take another one for the team then I think we need a different kind of revolution. There comes a point when we need to be up against those walls.
posted by fullerine at 2:49 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also want Biden to do a national whistle-stop tour but instead of visiting towns by train he rolls up in a sweet vintage Thunderbird, blasting "More Than a Feeling" at full blast, and burning rubber as he leaves to make it to the next town in time.

I'm thinking he's probably replaced the snowflake hubcaps with spinners by now, and added an airbrushed portrait of his own smiling face on the hood, with a big sparkle on his huge teeth. And with the vanity plate "VP 4 LYF".
posted by krinklyfig at 3:27 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Delete Your Column
posted by octothorpe at 3:39 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


If a revolution comes, the progressives aren't the ones armed to the teeth. Not that small arms matter that much against the larger US drone army.

If they mean a voting revolution, they are vastly overestimating the importance and power of the presidency. Without replacing state legislatures, us house and Senate seats, governors and even mayors, sheriff and other small local offices, the revolution will have little more long term effect than, say, Jesse Ventura did. A revolution needs to happen at all levels, nor just top down.

That takes work, organization, money and, most importantly, qualified people willing to run for office.

Meanwhile, here in Hawaii, we have a Republican campaigning on the fact that she's cancer free . Mark Takai, one of our congressmen, recently stepped down sure to pancreatic cancer. This Republican is using "make Hawaii great again" as a tag line.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:31 AM on June 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


Come to think of it, maybe America under Roosevelt is exactly the historical model progressivea have in mind. But it's so hard to separate what happened in America from what happened in the world at large at that time. Hitlee, Stalin, Pearl Harbor, World War One. And yeah it ended the depression and resulted in a period of sustained prosperity for the US, but good god would I not want to try replicate those historical circumstances. It could have ended very very differently, and the endings weren't so happy for the rest of the world as it was. That's no golden age to wish for a return to, however heroic its leaders may seem now. Roosevelt didn't get the New Deal passed because he was just so ideologically pure that the workers of the US uited behind him and the robber barons cowered from the prospect of a Leninist uprising in the US, though yeah, that dynamic was there... Roosevelt pulled "undemocratic" and "corrupt" tricks like trying to pack the Supreme Court. He promised not to get us involved in any foreign wars, then declared war on Japan because the attack on Pearl Harbor mde it "not foreign." He was no pacificist. He funded the Manhattan project. And he has huge majorites in Congress to work with because the Great Depression had completely discredited the opposition. Nevertheless the socialist true believers thought he was too incrementalist, thought America needed a real revolution like the USSR had, and Roosevelt was standing in the way of that, trying to buy people off with crumbs that left the broken system unchanged. They didn't know yet how that would work out for the USSR, but we do know, so that kind of rhetoric is a lot less appealing these days. We can't recreate the circumstances of FDR's success, nor should we want to, for God's sake. The world almost ended, people were miserable and terrified. At least when Republicans get nostalgic for the post war 1950s, they edit out the circumstances that led to that prosperity from their decline narratives... To get nostalgic for the 1930s and 1940s requires and even more selective historical memory, editing out the immediate causes of those effects...
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:59 AM on June 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


eponysterical!
posted by infini at 5:08 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


(To be clear I know the New Deal happened before WWII, I'm just saying you can't ignore the relationship between the circumstances that led to the New Deal and the circumstances that led to WWII. And that Roosevelt's behavior during WWII shows that he wasn't really the isolationist/pacifist that he sort of pretended to be and that many people demand now. He might have appeared to be that in the 1930s, but he was never that ideologically pure... I hope this doesn't make it sound like I don't admire the hell out of Roosevelt because I do. But I admire him in part for his pragmatism and in spite of his flaws.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:33 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates: "Have you heard of Trump's brilliant idea to reach out to female voters by letting... Ben Roethlisberger speak at the RNC?"

Big Ben Says He Won't Endorse, Speak for Trump
posted by octothorpe at 5:34 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow. The biggest Bernie supporter on my timeline, who was posting borderline-conspiracy-theory stuff a while back, just shared Michael Arnovitz's post about how "the main fuel that powers the anti-Hillary crowd is sexism," which ends "She's going to be a fine president. I'm with her."

I am sure that Bernie or Bust is out there, but I'm not seeing a ton of evidence of it in my social circles.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:39 AM on June 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Mod note: A few deleted. In case you haven't noticed the cornucopia of mod notes in all the election threads, personal insults and making it personal generally are not okay. Also, let's step back from super angry fights about what/who is more disgusting (and similar), and increasingly angry / personal discussion about if politicians are all corrupt generally or equally, WWII, what about X country?, etc. It's a long thread, and a long, long, long, painful election season, so let's stick more to news and developments.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:53 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow. The biggest Bernie supporter on my timeline, who was posting borderline-conspiracy-theory stuff a while back, just shared Michael Arnovitz's post about how "the main fuel that powers the anti-Hillary crowd is sexism," which ends "She's going to be a fine president. I'm with her."

The biggest Bernie supporter on my timeline has posted the official news that Jill Stein has offered Sanders the POTUS slot on the Green ticket and he has accepted. The refusal of any news organizations to pick this up is just more proof of the conspiracy to shut news of Bernie's triumphs out. Ah.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:04 AM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Just pointing out for the gazillionth time that the "political revolution" Bernie's been advocating consists of more political engagement – voting in every election, volunteering for progressive candidates, organizing at grassroots level, getting involved in local Democratic Committees.

It seems fairly obvious that a lot of Democrats think that increased political engagement on the part of progressives is very bad thing. But the only arguments these people are willing to produce against progressive Democrats getting more involved political process involve ignoring the word "political" and making up stuff.

I think the kind of "political revolution" Sanders is talking about can result in getting more candidates who share our values elected, and I think that's a good thing. (Of course, I realize not all Democrats share my values, so they're not all going to see it that way.)
posted by nangar at 7:08 AM on June 12, 2016 [12 favorites]




nangar, the latest little digression into revolution started with people talking about accelerationists, some of whom may be nominally Bernie supporters, but most of whom are folks who claim to be progressive/leftist/whatever but advocate voting for the worst possible reactionary or fascist candidate in order to hasten the revoution that will obviously only occur when everything gets as bad as possible. Such people exist, they come out of the woodwork every four years, and we discuss them every four years. This year they're a bit more fascinating than usual given that some have hitched their wagons to Sanders and some to Trump, and it's possible they're the core of the group who claim to be switching their allegiance from Sanders to Trump.

There are comparable groups on the right (notably the strain of evangelical who want to hasten holy war in Israel to trigger the Second Coming and so deliberately vote for whoever is worst on foreign policy), but more mefites know more fringe lefties in real life, and the fringe is always interesting and attention-grabbing. If you're reading discussion of accelerationists as being about ALL Bernie supporters, I think you're reading things into the thread that aren't there at all, and people have been fairly careful the last couple hundred comments to distinguish Bernie supporters in general from "this one crazy Bernie supporter I know."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:17 AM on June 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


It seems fairly obvious that a lot of Democrats think that increased political engagement on the part of progressives is very bad thing.

I don't really understand what this means. Can you elaborate?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:17 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


It seems fairly obvious that a lot of Democrats think that increased political engagement on the part of progressives is very bad thing.

I have neither heard nor read a single Democrat or other progressive/liberal/leftie say--or even imply--anything of the sort, on Metafilter, elsewhere on the internet, in other media, or in "real life."

I am genuinely confused as to where you would get this impression. Can you provide examples of what you are referring to?
posted by dersins at 7:26 AM on June 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Mod note: This is not a general current events thread and we are not discussing the Orlando shooting at the tail end of a 2700-comment thread unless and until it turns out the shooter was carrying a Trump manifesto in his underwear. Until then it is a VERY BAD DERAIL that makes this already-difficult thread a nightmare to moderate.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:27 AM on June 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


Yeah, I've been dealing with accelerationists since the 90s. They thought that George W. Bush would hasten the revolution, too. But point taken about these people being decidedly fringe.
It seems fairly obvious that a lot of Democrats think that increased political engagement on the part of progressives is very bad thing.
I think it's an awesome thing. It's also pretty difficult, and I don't see a lot of evidence locally that the Bernie people are trying it yet. Turnout in last week's primary was low, and candidates who stressed their connections with Bernie mostly didn't do very well. (They were also mostly not great candidates in other ways, though.) But seriously: nothing would make me happier. From my selfish local point of view, I desperately want more young people, who came out heavily for Bernie, to get involved in local politics. I think, for instance, that it's a real problem for local government that renters mostly don't vote. It means that homeowners and landlords have a voice, and renters, who are about half of the local population, aren't represented. I am really not hostile to increased progressive participation. I just don't think that Bernie would be a good president, even though I agree with many of his positions.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:35 AM on June 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


ArbitraryAndCapricious: They thought that George W. Bush would hasten the revolution, too.

Well... if you think about it... he kinda did. Massive housing bubble, financial implosion => Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. That's about as revolutionary as Americans get these days.
posted by clawsoon at 7:46 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Reuters:
Bernie Sanders may have lost his bid to become the Democratic nominee for the White House, but party members don't want the U.S. senator from Vermont to step off the stage.

More than three-quarters of Democrats say Sanders should have a "major role" in shaping the party's positions, while nearly two thirds say Hillary Clinton - who beat him for the nomination - should pick him as her vice-presidential running mate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

In a sign that Democrats hope their party can unite after a fierce primary season, two-thirds also said that Sanders should endorse Clinton, a former secretary of state and senator who appears bound for a showdown with Republican Donald Trump in November's presidential election.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:53 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I guess the terminology is kind of vague. Revolutionary is a pretty hyperbolic way of describing, "increasing enfranchisement and voter turn out." Which is something that almost all democrats support and have been working towards, even if it sometimes seems like a slog that's not going fast enough.

And if that is really what is meant, which is plausible, as politicians do use hyperbolic language to get people excited and supporting them, then I am for it. To me it seems like a completely separate question from whether I personally think Sanders would have been a better outcome for the primaries. And it is a completely compatible goal with voting for Clinton/against Trump. And if people are wedded to the language of revolution, I do think it is possible to use it more carefully and clearly to express what is really meant. And while I did not donate often to Sanders presidential campaign (before settling on Clinton), I would definitely donate to a Sanders headed (or even figure headed) voter enfranchisement/turnout campaign that took on voter id laws, availability and access to polling places, and gerrymandering. Long term, I can see how the results could be described as revolutionary (hopefully from the vantage point of looking back on a peaceful and casualty-free process).
posted by Salamandrous at 7:57 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


There are probably some status quo Democrats (who in a previous generation or two would be Eisenhower Republicans who see a lot of the "let's burn the whole thing down" rhetoric on the part of the far left and far right as being a negative.

Many of these individuals are getting to the point in their lives where they are contemplating retirement and probably having to deal with transitioning to some form of single-payer health care like Medicare. Many are also dealing with issues like having aging parents and kids that for whatever reason haven't left home.

For these individuals there is a real appeal to some of the promises of people like Sanders in regards to making higher education more affordable but to a certain degree they are removed from that unless they still have kids in college or they work in higher education. it's a fear and concern but it's more remote than the concern of "will my 401k actually allow me to enjoy retirement or will I be a housepoor senior living on canned food".

For these people the incremental approach has a lot of appeal because it's aiming to improve on the status quo in some easily defined areas and it has very little risk. Clinton's policy platform is essentially been proven by 8 years of Obama and really makes pretty minimal drastic changes (because Republicans are expected to block almost everything). This is a low risk but relatively low reward strategy that is built around continuity and do no harm and for a lot of centrist and older Americans it has a lot of appeal.

For the Gen X group there is kind of a catch 22. For the most part we don't have college expenses still having over us and we are rapidly moving into our prime income earning years ye there is still this massive demographic hump of boomers ahead of us that are still blocking some upward movement. So we tend to want stability because honestly those boomers need to retire and get out of the way but we also need them to be secure when they retire because at least for some younger gen xers some of them are our parents. However we also have seen our ability to retire basically evaporate in a series of financial bubbles that has left many 401ks in crappy shape and we are increasingly struggling to get ourselves and our families into good neighborhoods with good skills. We want progressive change because we want our kids to be able to succeed and we are shocked by the cost of education especially those with kids that are rapidly becoming college age so we want change and suspect it needs to be dramatic change but we are also somewhat risk adverse because shit could always get worse and gen xers gonna pessimist.

The millenials and generation z that make up so much of the support of Sanders on the progressive side have the least to lose and the most to gain by disrupting the system. Many are graduating with incredibly expensive degrees and struggling to find decent jobs in the current economy. The stories that they have been told "work hard, go to college, get a good job, house, wife and 2 kids" are seeming very remote to many of them. They are also incredibly connected in a digital sense so even if they are doing well they know lots of people that are struggling. They are also extremely idealistic (in a good way) and don't have the deep cynicism of gen X in many ways so they really believe that the world can be changed and I really hope they are right. On the other hand they have a lot of challenges facing them that can tend to dilute their power.

Also keep in mind that these perspectives tend to be those of white progressives. Progressives from minority groups such as the LGBT community, or PoC communities have other perspectives that might either accentuate their openness to change (many LGBT progressives might see the massive change in regards to LGBT rights in their lifetime as showing that economic justice issues might be possible) or resistance to change (many in the AA community might see how historically the gains made by progressives on economic issues have not been shared equally with minority groups). The failure of Sanders campaign to address communities of color in a way that recognizes intersectionality of race, class, gender, etc as being intrinsic in tackling the overarching issues of economic justice seemed to temper the enthuisasm by many communities of color in terms of supporting Sanders.

I do think that a revolution that involves getting out and supporting progressive candidates at all levels of government is absolutely needed but I feel like Sanders was a poor carrier for that banner because what could've been a very broad progressive movement focused on electing all sorts of progressives to government has largely been spent attacking another liberal candidate for the presidency in what seems like a vainglorious attempt at achieving some sort of legacy. I never felt like giving to Sanders campaign was building a broad progressive movement ala a progressive Occupy Washington but was instead used to buy ad time in states at ridiculous rates.

In short while I felt like Sanders for the most part was focused on the right things at the beginning of the campaign a lot of the people surrounding him were incredibly short sighted in their strategy and eventually what I initially saw as a campaign about promoting progressive ideals became a campaign devoted to attacking allies. Yes some of my perception was fueled by the extreme toxicity found online but there was definitely a point where instead of promoting an alternative vision the campaign seemed to shift to "anybody but Hillary" and I'm sorry that is not what I see as representing progressive values.
posted by vuron at 8:04 AM on June 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


It's not really the rhetoric of "revolution" that I have a problem with (though I agree with what others have said about that being hyperbolic.) What I really don't like a when people say that things used to be better but now the system is corrupt. Because the system was always pretty corrupt. I don't know of any "pure" political systems in the real world. And I don't think that kind of rhetoric has good consequences.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:16 AM on June 12, 2016 [15 favorites]


It seems fairly obvious that a lot of Democrats think that increased political engagement on the part of progressives is very bad thing.

> I don't really understand what this means. Can you elaborate?


I mean the people who've been telling us Bernie supporters aren't "real Democrats" for the past year and demanding that we get out of the Democratic Party. The people who've been loudly proclaiming 'this is the Democratic Party not the Socialist Party' – this over support for moderate social democratic policies, what's traditionally been called New-Deal progressivism in American politics. The people who've told me I should be ashamed of every vote I've ever cast for Democratic Party because don't come from the right socio-economic background to be a real Democrat.

I think almost every Bernie supporter who's had contact with Hillary supporters on the internet has been subjected to this 'get out of our Party' shit over and over. So, some Hillary supporters are assholes, and some of them are clearly more economically conservative than their candidate. (This is not meant to excuse bad behavior on the part of Bernie supporters, though I think it may contribute to some of the bitterness.)
posted by nangar at 8:16 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah I totally feel the pain of trying to bring progressive values into the local elections scene because let's face it progressive especially young progressives don't tend to turn out for most elections especially for local races.

So inevitably you tend to have a slate of very status quo business oriented Republicans even in ostensibly non-partisan races that have lots of financial support and tend to be pretty well supported by older white property owning conservatives. These are the types that will basically shoot down just about any ballot initiate that raises taxes other than maybe police and fire services and tend to try to cut funding for just about any municipal program that they don't actively use.

Opposing them tends to be a very committed but not particularly wealthy core of hardcore older progressives that have shown up loyally for decades and do a whole lot of unpaid work as precinct chairs and stuff like that. These people really lament that they can get tons of new voters to show up exactly 1 time every 4 years but a whole ton of elections do not take place in presidential election years.

Because the conservatives tend to be relatively well funded it's challenging to find decent progressive candidates at a local level (very few progressives are financially independent and most local politicians depend on outside income) and many of the ones that do get "recruited" tend to be the standard "angry old man yells at cloud types" who always show up at city council and tend to get up to speak about some crazy moonbat theory.

So it's challenging because bad candidates lead to bad voter participation which leads to bad candidates ad infinitum.

So yes there is totally a role for a national organization that really helps to recruit progressives and promote them through local, state and federal elections and the Howard Dean DNC was going along that road and it kinda fell apart.

So yeah progressives should totally try to push DWS out of the DNC and get a progressive grassroots person to really help do community organizing, hrmm I think I know someone that will actually be unemployed in a couple of months that would fit the bill...
posted by vuron at 8:20 AM on June 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


There's something really infuriating to me about the accelerationist argument. I resent the innocence that makes it possible to believe that's how things work.

I don't know how much of it can be excused as ignorance after Nick Land's turn to neoreaction. That whole strain of thought -- starting with certain elements of the speculative realism movement and ending up with accelerationism on one side and "Dark Enlightenment" on the other -- seems to lead to some pretty terrible ideas.

It's the sort of thing you commit to only if you can't imagine having to suffer the material consequences yourself. Ultimately, it seems like disavowed authoritarianism.
posted by kewb at 8:21 AM on June 12, 2016


I mean the people who've been telling us Bernie supporters aren't "real Democrats" for the past year and demanding that we get out of the Democratic Party. The people who've been loudly proclaiming 'this is the Democratic Party not the Socialist Party'

While it is certainly possible that this is a thing, I have not seen it. Can you provide an example so that we can understand what, specifically, you are referring to?
posted by dersins at 8:22 AM on June 12, 2016 [17 favorites]


Interesting interview with Gary Johnson in the Guardian.
“Legalizing marijuana, military intervention and that crony capitalism is alive and well,” he said, rattling off issues of concern that he and the progressive Sanders share. “People with money are able to pay for privilege, and they buy it.”

But they differ on key economic issues, where, as Johnson put it, “We definitely come to a fork in the road.” The paths diverge even more widely on campaign finance: Sanders wants to limit major contributions; Johnson supports unlimited campaign donations provided everything is disclosed.

Johnson also finds trouble on the other side of the spectrum. He veers widely from conservative orthodoxy in ways that could alienate social conservatives who are suspicious of Trump. Although Johnson claimed his “right-to-life credentials as governor of New Mexico were pretty good”, he said that in recent years he had “come more and more on the side of woman’s right to choose”.

He said his position “mirrors the law of the land, which is Casey v Planned Parenthood, which is that a woman has a right to have an abortion up to viability of the fetus”.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:25 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


> the latest little digression into revolution started with people talking about accelerationists, some of whom may be nominally Bernie supporters, but most of whom are folks who claim to be progressive/leftist/whatever but advocate voting for the worst possible reactionary or fascist candidate in order to hasten the revoution that will obviously only occur when everything gets as bad as possible. Such people exist, they come out of the woodwork every four years, and we discuss them every four years.

I think most the 'True Left' had condemned Sanders for running as a Democrat and being a social democrat rather a real socialist. A lot of them expressed hope that they could recruit Bernie supporters after his inevitable defeat. Maybe that's part of what's playing out right now.
posted by nangar at 8:46 AM on June 12, 2016


I have seen some Democrats condemn Sanders actions related to continuing to attack Clinton despite the obvious result as being harmful to Clinton and the party. There is a feeling that if Sanders was truly concerned about the good of the party he would gracefully drop out and us his remaining resources and platform on down ballot races rather than wasting resources on a foregone conclusion.

They also have resentment for what they feel is Bernie making a last moment conversion to Democrat in order to take advantage of the greater platform available to candidates of the two main parties.

There is also anger at his apparent attacks against long time Democratic leaders like Malloy and Frank that seem like grudge holding plus the promotion of figures like Cornel West who hold deeply oppositional positions to Clinton and Obama.

Plus there is more than a few voices that are actively threatening to help defeat Clinton because she is a bigger threat than Trump despite that being obviously false.Threats to defeat the candidate that was selected by the majority of the party are seen as undermining the party at a time of great risk
posted by vuron at 9:09 AM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Orlando thread.
posted by Artw at 9:27 AM on June 12, 2016


I keep hearing that Clinton should offer Sanders the VP slot. Sanders has been an effective Senator. Would he be interested in the VP slot, which has a ton of ceremonial duties? VP is not a runner-up position.
posted by theora55 at 9:36 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]




The judge needs to move the trial up to before the election. Just to remind us who's the candidate who will be indicted (for fraud, bribery, etc.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:42 AM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


The judge needs to move the trial up to before the election. Just to remind us who's the candidate who will be indicted (for fraud, bribery, etc.)

This is a civil suit, not a criminal case. And it is very unlikely that there will ever be a criminal case, although there is the remote possibility of a government consumer civil action.

The risk to Trump is not a criminal indictment. It is the exposure of the fact that he is not a successful business man but instead a common grifter.
posted by JackFlash at 10:48 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


So now one of my conservative Facebook friends (who has so far survived the purge of douchbags) is posting that, since the Trump University case doesn't have anything to do with immigration, Trump shouldn't have said what he did, but if it WERE an immigration case, Trump would have a point. I know I read an article somewhere in one of these massive election posts that talked about how a judges' race can NEVER be a reason for recusal, and provided examples where people tried to get judges recused for their race in seemly more applicable situations and were shot down. Does anybody know where that article went? When I google, I just get actual decisions written in legalese.
posted by Weeping_angel at 10:48 AM on June 12, 2016


This article I posted here?
posted by peeedro at 10:52 AM on June 12, 2016


It is the exposure of the fact that he is not a successful business man but instead a common grifter.
So common grifters don't get prosecuted criminally? That's good to know; it helps clarify my future career plans.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:54 AM on June 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I keep hearing that Clinton should offer Sanders the VP slot. Sanders has been an effective Senator. Would he be interested in the VP slot, which has a ton of ceremonial duties? VP is not a runner-up position.

The chatter about Warren confounds me for the same reason.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:02 PM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


I know I read an article somewhere in one of these massive election posts that talked about how a judges' race can NEVER be a reason for recusal, and provided examples where people tried to get judges recused for their race in seemly more applicable situations and were shot down.

It's common sense. Say there's a case where a white off-duty policeman faces assault charges for fighting 4 African American guys and their Asian friend. If you go by race alone, 99% of judges would have a theoretical "bias" in favor of, or against, the defendant. Who would be acceptable? Only an (East) Indian-American or Native American judge?

Even more so, a rape case. Men are biased and women are biased, so your judge is.... ?
posted by msalt at 12:20 PM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Well, yes, it is common sense, but I like examples to back me up. And, with this particular guy, facts actually work sometimes (which is how he's avoided the purge so far).
posted by Weeping_angel at 12:23 PM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes! Thanks, peeedro!
posted by Weeping_angel at 12:24 PM on June 12, 2016


Secretary of Labor, with teeth, would be more useful than VP, I'd imagine.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:00 PM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Trump tweets humble brag after Orlando shooting

I can't even...
posted by zakur at 2:01 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


It is legit possible that he is the single most vile person in the entire United State of America
posted by dersins at 2:04 PM on June 12, 2016 [20 favorites]


Every time I think that he's reached bottom, he manages to dig deeper.
posted by octothorpe at 2:08 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


He is playing to his base. There are millions of the vile.
posted by bukvich at 2:09 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, his whole primary campaign was based on, "Look how much of an asshole I can be!" and it got him this far. I think about the possibility of him being president the next time one of these shootings happens, and what sort of dumpster fire speech he would give.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:18 PM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


That would be the darkest timeline.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yep. Every time somebody posts one of those things (not here) about how Clinton is just as bad as Trump I think about days like today and want to let my incandescent rage boil over. But I don't because it won't change their minds. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason into.
posted by Justinian at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2016 [19 favorites]


FWIW, a left-libertarian comedian I follow on Facebook polled his libertarian followers about who we would choose (gun-to-our-head, only-two-choices) Trump or Clinton? We all said "Clinton" with only one exception, and that exception only said Trump because he thought Trump would bring the whole system down faster.

A lot these were people likely to share "Evil A vs. Evil B, they're both evil" type memes but when required to give an answer we were in universal agreement on which was the lesser evil.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:39 PM on June 12, 2016


Statement from Donald Trump:
Last night, our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist. It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in six months. My deepest sympathy and support goes out to the victims, the wounded and their families.

In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam.’ For that reason alone, he should step down. If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words ‘Radical Islam’ she should get out of this race for the Presidency.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:44 PM on June 12, 2016


Statement from Donald Trump

I hate his face so much. SO MUCH, y'all.
posted by Salieri at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


I'm glad he got to use the deaths of 50 people to campaign for president, the fucking vulture.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:54 PM on June 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Yes, because those two words are magic and will surely prevent this from happening again. What a vile, odious man.
posted by chaoticgood at 3:02 PM on June 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


In his remarks today, Donald Trump disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘LGBT.’ For that reason alone, he should get out of this race for the Presidency.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:02 PM on June 12, 2016 [41 favorites]


weeping angel: Well, yes, it is common sense, but I like examples to back me up. And, with this particular guy, facts actually work sometimes (which is how he's avoided the purge so far).

Wikipedia has some cases on point
.
In 1974, Federal Judge Leon Higginbotham issued his decision in Comm. of Pa. v. Local 542, Int'l Union of Operating Engineers, explaining why he as an African American judge with a history of active involvement in the civil rights struggle was not obligated to recuse himself from presiding over litigation concerning claims of racial discrimination.[4] He held, in an opinion that was followed by later judges, including a series of black judges who faced recusal requests, that a judge should not be forced to recuse solely because of their membership in a minority group.[5]

Jewish federal Judge Paul Borman relied on the Higginbotham opinion in part in his 2014 decision not to recuse himself from the trial of Palestinian-American Rasmea Odeh.[6] Similarly, in 1994, Jewish then-federal-Judge Michael Mukasey refused to recuse himself in a case concerning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, warning that his recusal would “disqualify not only an obscure district judge such as the author of this opinion, but also Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter ... each having been both a Jew and a Zionist.”[7]

The fact is that it is EXTREMELY rare to challenge a judge for bias, and even more rare to win. My mom has been a lawyer for 61 years, including a lot of contentious social justice cases for migrant farm workers, for example, and has done so exactly once. It's still one of her favorite dramatic tales of a high-risk courtroom maneuver.

You'll notice that for all his bluster, Trump's lawyers haven't challenged Curiel either.
posted by msalt at 3:51 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah anyone who tries to pull some false equivalence bullshit in regards to herp derp Clinton is the same as Trump is going to get some extreme stinkeye from me.
posted by vuron at 4:18 PM on June 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think about the possibility of him being president the next time one of these shootings happens, and what sort of dumpster fire speech he would give.

You only have to wait until tomorrow for that dumpster fire. In the copy of the press release that's on his website, there's a footnote saying that "the major Trump speech" he promised last week will not be about the Clintons, but will focus on "this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security."
posted by effbot at 5:00 PM on June 12, 2016


I'd like to believe that he realized it would be inappropriate to demonize his political opponent to the extent he was likely planning in the wake of today's events, but instead I believe he just found a better and less powerful target to demonize and hate.
posted by Justinian at 5:08 PM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


"You guys! The President just said 'radical Islam' ! Time to pack it up and go home, we can't be terrorists anymore, they're on to us." -- Trump's conception of ISIS, apparently.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:33 PM on June 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Clearly he didn't mean it with the drones and the blowing up and so on and so on!"
posted by Artw at 6:28 PM on June 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Some shady Twitter shit going on here
posted by Artw at 7:30 PM on June 12, 2016


Some shady Twitter shit going on here

Frowny face. “Trump is setting up fake accounts to look slightly less idiotic.” is a statement that needs a heck of a lot of substantiation, and some fool on Twitter blaming a bogus account on Trump without evidence is likely to get a well-deserved backlash.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:37 PM on June 12, 2016


Seems much more likely to me that its an idiot Trump supporter. There are so many of those.
posted by Justinian at 7:49 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]




What in the actual fuck
posted by dersins at 8:01 PM on June 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


guess he didnt get the memo
posted by Justinian at 8:06 PM on June 12, 2016


Maybe he's going to destroy ISIS by breaking up the banks
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:13 PM on June 12, 2016 [10 favorites]


Seriously Bernie that is your comment?

Holy shit words fail me.
posted by vuron at 8:18 PM on June 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is his statement, that's more of a follow-up. Still kind of a crappy one IMHO.
posted by Artw at 8:28 PM on June 12, 2016


Wait, so is Bernie seriously considering a third-party run?
posted by stolyarova at 8:49 PM on June 12, 2016


This is his statement
"At this point we do not know whether this was an act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person..."
Why is this an "or" statement? What happened is so very clearly all three of those things.
posted by dersins at 8:55 PM on June 12, 2016 [26 favorites]


E pluribus unum - "the 'war on terror' cannot be won by defeating ISIS or Al Qaeda or any other enemy, but will end when the people of the Middle East have hope of living decent lives in stable countries with legitimate governments. Most problems in the world must be solved, not defeated..." /zootopia
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Some interesting election takes from the past few weeks from Scott Carrier (I've linked one before, but this is the full set - even if the last episode is apart from the previous three). Carrier’s take on Clinton is to my mind very “white male” / traditional left - she’s an oligarch, and America has chosen to have an election between two oligarchs. I think his takes are interesting, but I can’t say that I find his read that compelling.

Which kind of gets to my problem with the E Pluribus unum essay above, despite the positive nature of the sentiment. It seems like the people who don’t Identify as racial partisans in the country are those who haven’t been forced to by dint of not coming into contact with other races - in other words, whites who exist in a racial vacuum. Still, I’d be really interested in seeing hard numbers on this. In the same way that MetaFilter has made me aware that more people see gender everywhere than I’d suspected, it’s also made me aware that more people see race everywhere than I’d suspected. Numbers would help me know if my new self is just as biased as my old self.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:29 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Frowny face. “Trump is setting up fake accounts to look slightly less idiotic.” is a statement that needs a heck of a lot of substantiation, and some fool on Twitter blaming a bogus account on Trump without evidence is likely to get a well-deserved backlash.

It does look pretty sketchy. They list "their" official website but the URL (http://lgbt.foundation/) for this 4-hour-old Phoenix Arizona organization belongs to an LGBT group in Manchester UK. The latest press release on that website is 02/02/2016.
posted by msalt at 1:50 AM on June 13, 2016


Unfortunately the reality is that for the vast majority of voters economics is basically a foreign language which I suspect is in part by design... In short hate the game not the player.

it's hard to hate if it's not understood[1,2,3]... which reminds me of a great comment you had in the 'even the IMF is questioning neoliberalism' thread:
The unfortunate economic reality has been that at a macro-level consumption has basically become the number one driver of demand but at a micro-level you have a situation where in order to operate a maximum efficiency and maximum shareholder return companies are expected to do more with less. Technology has mainly driven productivity boosts but the majority of those productivity boosts seem to either get returned to the investors in the form of increased profits or get used to cut the workforce which also gets a return of increase profits...
but what constitutes 'productivity'?[1,2,3]* to the degree that we've entered a post-industrial economy, increasing dollar-transacted productivity gains might be better characterized as just more make-work and rentierism.

lifting the 'veil of money':
It is tempting to look at this strictly in terms of financial capital but that is again succumbing to the veil of of money much as many people have in their definition of scarcity. Dollar bills don't feed people. Gold bars can't be used as smart phones. The capital that matters is productive physical capital...

More recent innovations in finance have not contributed meaningfully to the proper creation and allocation of physical capital. Quite the opposite. They have contributed to the “financialization” of the economy: a growth in financial sector activities that is decoupled from or even harms the formation of physical capital...
particularly when more and more prices go 'missing', re: (high and rising) externalities
Why won't capitalism help us? Because the great strength and the great weakness of capitalism is that it relies on prices determined in markets. Prices are amazingly powerful because they efficiently aggregate information on consumer preferences, producer needs, etc. But not everything can be priced. And increasingly the things that cannot be priced are becoming much more important than those that can.

There are foundational issues that prevent the existence of prices for many things. This is not just a question of a missing market that can be magically solved by assigning property rights.
the way i see it, the center isn't holding and the 'incremental approach' to the status quo carries its own risks (never mind climate change) which brings me to...

The millenials and generation z that make up so much of the support of Sanders on the progressive side have the least to lose and the most to gain by disrupting the system. Many are graduating with incredibly expensive degrees and struggling to find decent jobs in the current economy.

so maybe in the interests of counteracting reflexive (vestigial?) tribalism that seems to be gathering -- or not! -- here's a [not quite massively upvoted ;] reddit comment that i think is representative of some sanders supporters:
I'm a millennial from a poor-as-shit family who had the good fortune of getting a medical degree - even with grants, tuition at a public medical school puts me a quarter-million in debt, which I'll spend half my life paying off, to work in a healthcare system considered one of the most inequitable and inefficient in the modern world.

So yes, I will continue to support Sanders, and I will continue to support his platform, because I have seen firsthand the damage done to our citizens by the gutting of education and healthcare. I have seen patients suffer because of it; my colleagues and myself have become indentured servants to debt because of it; and it is definitely, absolutely unsustainable.

This will no doubt continue under Clinton, until the insurance companies and banks run out of debt to collect - both medical and student debt have essentially zero liquidity, unless you want to repossess degrees and wheelchairs.
despite the positive nature of the sentiment. It seems like the people who don’t Identify as racial partisans in the country are those who haven’t been forced to by dint of not coming into contact with other races - in other words, whites who exist in a racial vacuum.

sure it's not all about class struggle and if anything, like taking a balanced and restorative justice approach, the priority should be on repairing harm done to the community, but i guess as people like federici, james, coates, zizek and MLK seem to have concluded the focus should still be on improving the eco­nomic situ­ation (and political representation) of sys­tem­at­ic­ally mar­gin­al­ised groups.

---
*"again i can't stress enough that productivity as measured by 'output' per hour or per capita or whatever only looks at dollar transactions, which to me (and the economist apparently) increasingly has less to do with actual utility and use value that people attach to their stuff and activities vs. price... so anyway, sure, establish NGDP level targets to guarantee that a high and rising level of dollar transactions take place, but that leaves the quality of such transaction to? and never mind the credibility of that guarantee?"
posted by kliuless at 1:59 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


reddit comment that i think is representative of some sanders supporters:
"I'm a millennial from a poor-as-shit family who had the good fortune of getting a medical degree..."
I'm sure there is a not inconsiderable number of twenty-something doctors from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, but I suspect that may not exactly be a swing demographic.
posted by dersins at 2:24 AM on June 13, 2016




The imam, who was not identified by name by reporter Meghan McRoberts, said if presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump were president, the anger would shift away from Muslims, according to a WPTV reporter.

I think "confused" would be a better characterization of his position than "pro-Trump".
posted by sour cream at 3:02 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


It does look pretty sketchy. They list "their" official website but the URL (http://lgbt.foundation/) for this 4-hour-old Phoenix Arizona organization belongs to an LGBT group in Manchester UK.

The "endorsing" account spells LGBT with an i: https://twitter.com/igbtphoenix

Not that https://twitter.com/lgbtphoenix is a real organization either. Or https://twitter.com/lbgtphoenix. Or any of the other permutations that I'm sure are out there.

Did Trump retweet any of these, or why are the antics of a bunch of bored 16-year olds relevant?
posted by effbot at 3:05 AM on June 13, 2016


Seriously Bernie that is your comment?

Holy shit words fail me.


We wanted the Bernie who voted against DOMA, but instead we got the Bernie who voted to let gun manufacturers off the hook for murder. Ugh.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:02 AM on June 13, 2016 [20 favorites]


Meanwhile, in the GOP:

Judd Legum: Trump Suggests Obama Is Purposely Allowing Muslims To Commit Terrorist Acts In The United States
Trump said there were two possible reasons the gun massacre took place in Orlando. The first possibility was that Obama is “not tough” and “not smart” and therefore incapable of stopping terrorist attacks.

The other scenario, according to Trump, is that Obama is fully capable of stopping terrorist attacks but “has something else in mind.” In other words, Obama is purposefully allowing terrorists to kill people in the United States to pursue a hidden agenda.

Trump emphasized this second theory. “The something else in mind, people can’t believe it,” Trump said, “There is something going on. It’s inconceivable.”

Trump made a similar point earlier in the interview: “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands.”
Allegra Kirkland: Cruz Calls For Abandoning ‘Political Correctness’ In Wake Of Orlando
"Enough is enough. What we need is for every American—Democrat and Republican—to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism," Cruz said in a statement Sunday.

While the Texas senator called for unity, he chastised Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for refusing to “utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’” He also predicted that Democrats would “exploit” the attack, which left 53 dead and 50 wounded, to advocate for gun control.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:15 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


So, just to recap, the current nominee for the party thinks the President is a SEEKRIT MOOSLEM. The man a large chunk of the party wants to replace him with in a "rebellion"-- a man who, it bears repeating, happily attended an event run by a guy who has publicly called for the genocide of LGBT people--thinks the problem is that we're "too PC." Both of them are smugly and loudly homophobic, transphobic, and Islamophobic to the point of wanting to actually harm innocent people. One of them will be rewarded for this by becoming the representative of 40%+ of the electorate, and possibly of the country itself. At least one of them will remain in a position of power and a "thought leader" for that same electorate.

We can not let the people who allow these monsters to thrive (or worse, happily support them) get away with this.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:26 AM on June 13, 2016 [30 favorites]


It is both horrifying and predictable that the homophobes and transphobes would instantly jump up to take an attack on gay and trans people as an opportunity to attack Islam.

The Republican Party and ISIS are in full agreement that gay people are evil subhumans who need to be driven underground. And it isn't as if the Republicans were ever willing to denounce the Radical Christians calling for the death of gay and trans people; or even the Radical Christians who actually did kill gay and trans people.
posted by sotonohito at 7:07 AM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


We wanted the Bernie who voted against DOMA, but instead we got the Bernie who voted to let gun manufacturers off the hook for murder. Ugh.


Bernie's response at this point in the election cycle feels like having a boyfriend who decides he needs to break your heart so you'll dump him for your own good but instead of just cheating on you like a reasonable misguided asshole he runs over your dog.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:10 AM on June 13, 2016 [18 favorites]


Let us be reminded that despite the glowing Orange bigot being a particular trainwreck he stands smack dab in the center of mainstream conservative sentiment. This is not some stealth bigot that ran away with the nomination by guile.

This sort of hatred is centerplace in the conservative movement. Whether it's homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, gynophobia, etc there is a culture of extreme hate that is tolerated and even encouraged. Instead of keeping their hate behind closed doors they are saying that they will no longer tolerate "political correctness" i.e. they will feel free to hate in public because a plurality of their base thinks that is appropriate.

I really try to be compassionate to conservatives I know and work with (some I am even apparently related to...) and understand where they are coming from and what fuels their support for leaders that promote hate, I can understand that some just want more control over "their money" and that they don't necessarily vote based upon hate and fear but it's hard not to look at the current crop of conservative leaders and wonder how you can sign on to that platform.

I was listening to NPR yesterday and I heard an interview with a conservative Latino who intends on being a fundraiser for Trump even though he disagrees with what he says. This individual sees working with Trump as being the way to actually accomplish immigration reform because he feels like Trump represents the nativist block of the party. He somehow thinks supporting their champion will get them to negotiate even though the entire Republican party has been told over and over that compromise is failure. How can you fool yourselves into trying to see a silver lining?

And then I wake up to the news that this individual's imam is a Trump supporter...

I just don't know, I think that I really can't get more cynical about human nature without becoming a black hole of cynicism and then people continue to surprise me.

On the other hand I keep seeing evidence that stuff is improving in society but holy shit 2 steps backwards 1.99 steps back.
posted by vuron at 7:13 AM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


Trump made a similar point earlier in the interview: “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands.”

I'm so old I can remember when Trump ridiculed Little Marco for saying "Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing."
posted by JackFlash at 7:15 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wonder how far the Rs will go to "abandon political correctness"?

Do you think they'd pack the supreme court to rubber stamp gold crescents?
posted by Talez at 7:44 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy
Those of us who live and socialize among conservatives every day discover that another friend has—with greater or lesser reluctance—accepted the leadership of the bombastic businessman and reality-television star. To those of us who still cannot imagine Trump as either a nominee or a president, this movement toward him among our friends, relatives, and colleagues is in varying degrees baffling and sinister. Yet it is happening: an inescapable and accelerating fact.

Whatever happens in November, conservatives and Republicans will have brought a catastrophe upon themselves, in violation of their own stated principles and best judgment. It’s often said that a good con is based upon the victim’s weaknesses. Why were conservatives and Republicans so vulnerable? Are these vulnerabilities not specific to one side of the political spectrum—are they more broadly present in American culture? Could it happen to liberals and Democrats next time? Where were the guardrails?
 Why Trump Now? It’s the Empire, Stupid - "Amid the wreckage of the Iraq War and the Great Recession, he speaks to a constituency that sees the frontier and outward expansion as peril rather than possibility. "

Donald Trump, of all people: representing The Great White Hope, Inside A White Nationalist Conference Energized By Trump’s Rise, The Surge Of Trump-Fueled Anti-Semitism Is Hitting Jewish Reporters Who Cover Him, This might be the darkest theory yet about why Donald Trump keeps winning

Get Over Yourself and Support Hillary Clinton - "Don’t like her? Hate her? Get over it, babies. Fighting for freedom and justice right now means limiting the damage this thug is doing to the norms that make everything else possible. It means scrambling to preserve our sort-of-shitty but also pretty good institutions. Hillary Clinton is basically a living manifestation of America’s prevailing political culture. Plenty shitty—warmongering, more than a touch corrupt—but also a competent, reasonable, relatively decent, public-spirited creature of America’s one non-imploding establishment political party."

Neither Angels Nor Demons And The Importance Of Coalescing To Defeat Donald Trump - "Nevertheless, precisely because no politician operates in a vacuum, no politician can be held exclusively “responsible” for their situation. It is reasonable to ask the Clinton camp, loudly and insistently, what are you doing to earn the support of Sanders adherents? But it is also reasonable to ask Sanders adherents, what can Clinton do, short of morphing into Sanders, to earn your support?"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:00 AM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted, I think you're just talking about demographic change but it's phrased to sound sort-of like a death wish (which we're trying to avoid) and is picking up flags as a result.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 8:20 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump Has Lost the Plot: "Trump campaigned for the nomination like a metaphorical dog chasing a car. Having caught it, the only thing he can think to do is keep chasing."

And that was written before Trump's even more outlandish comments on the Orlando shooting. This is the guy who said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose voters, but even an insincere, perfunctory word of support to the LGBT community is a bridge too far.
posted by peeedro at 8:34 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]




> While the Texas senator called for unity, he chastised Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for refusing to “utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’” He also predicted that Democrats would “exploit” the attack, which left 53 dead and 50 wounded, to advocate for gun control.

The sheer fucking balls of these people. It's actually awesome, in the "awesome: causing feelings of fear and wonder" definition of the word. How can you even begin to bargain or reason with people like this?
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:40 AM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't know is there any real evidence that acting like a bigot actually hurts people among some key demographic groups?

This guy got the Republican nomination after being openly racist and Islamophobic and most of the party has rallied around him because that's what people do and people like Corb who are trying to stop Trump from inside the party are being silenced by party elites.

This is in a party that is spreading FUD about "pedophiles going into the girl's room" as a way of garnering support for transphobic bathroom bills.

This is someone that despite the likelihood that he will be defeated by Clinton is seen as a somewhat credible challenger and who will still probably get support from 40-45% of the US electorate including a majority of white males.

Hate and fear win elections unfortunately and the Republican party have become extremely adept at selling hate and fear to a large percentage of our fellow Americans.
posted by vuron at 8:41 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, sorry, what I meant was that I've heard people on the left, Black Lives Matter activists and others, call for a new constitutional convention that would work out some of the intractable old kinks of our founding document. I always wonder how they expect to overcome the fact that there is still a huge voting bloc of Americans who would prefer a much more regressive Constitution, leaving only the Second Amendment, etc. Sure, the Constitution is broken, but it could be a helluva lot worse. I know people hate being told to wait, but as young people take the place of old (especially old white male) folks in the voting booths, change will happen and has been happening (as we've seen with much greater acceptance of LGBTQ folks in daily life). I don't see how a new constitutional convention now wouldn't end in violence. But I could see it as being possible in another twenty years. I remember being young and desperate for change. Now I look back and see that we've actually made a lot of progress. Unfortunately, race is an issue we haven't made a lot of progress on. I know we have to keep fighting and pushing for progress, and we need leaders who will push those boundaries. We also need leaders who have the perspective to see that we can't get it all, all at once, and still live in a democracy.
posted by rikschell at 8:42 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Though having 5 progressive justices on SCOTUS would make the constitution we have look and work a lot better!
posted by rikschell at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Though having 5 progressive justices on SCOTUS would make the constitution we have look and work a lot better!

This country needs more Warren and Burger courts.
posted by Talez at 8:49 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


has Sanders lost his ever loving mind? I thought Obama just talked him down.
posted by angrycat at 8:53 AM on June 13, 2016


Hell I would be content with a handful of progressive and some reliably centrist justices because just about anything would be better than old situation of 4 fairly liberal (let's be honest some of the liberal judges are still fairly centrist) 4 completely conservative judges and some sort of weird-ass libertarian type being the fulcrum of power.

Read some of Trump's tweetstorms and his supposed shortlist of potential justices and tell me that there is no difference between Clinton and Trump. Tell me that you are willing to let conservatives replace Scalia with another conservative and possibly RBG (unless we can come up with a way of making her immortal) with a conservative because it will accelerate the progressive revolution.

I know people on the left are tired about hearing "It's all about the SCOTUS" but it doesn't change the fact that it's all about the SCOTUS and this is a relatively unique time in which a moderately progressive Democrat will be able to shape the nature of the SCOTUS for a generation.

Look back on what was accomplished during the Warren Court

Racial segregation: Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe, Cooper v. Aaron, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, Griffin v. County School Board, Green v. School Board of New Kent County, Lucy v. Adams, Loving v. Virginia
Voting, redistricting, and malapportionment: Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, Wesberry v. Sanders
Criminal procedure: Brady v. Maryland, Mapp v. Ohio, Miranda v. Arizona, Escobedo v. Illinois, Gideon v. Wainwright, Katz v. United States, Terry v. Ohio
Free speech: New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Brandenburg v. Ohio, Yates v. United States, Roth v. United States, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Memoirs v. Massachusetts, Tinker v. Des Moines School District
Establishment Clause: Engel v. Vitale, Abington School District v. Schempp
Free Exercise Clause: Sherbert v. Verner
Right to privacy and reproductive rights: Griswold v. Connecticut
Cruel and unusual punishment: Trop v. Dulles, Robinson v. California

Tell me that getting a solid liberal majority cannot make things demonstrably better for most Americans. And isn't that what progressives are all about?
posted by vuron at 8:57 AM on June 13, 2016 [16 favorites]






> Trump Ally Suggests Clinton Aide Is a Possible Terrorist

Trolls gonna troll.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:27 AM on June 13, 2016


there's a point at which you become sufficiently ugly, disingenuous, and racist that "troll" is far too kind a term to apply
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:28 AM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Dude, given that she's someone who has worked with the President and has had and continues to have intimate access to the top levels of US politics for years and the secret service don't think she's a spy then some sockless sleazmonger 'aint gonna figure it out with a quick google.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 9:34 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wow, Roger Stone who accused Huma Abedin of being a Saudi spy (really?) has been banned from CNN and MSNBC for being too racist. That was last week's racism, it appears he's outdoing himself.
posted by readery at 9:36 AM on June 13, 2016


Well, saying Abedin is a spy is a differnt tact than saying she's Clinton's lover, which is usually where he's at.

(Have I told you all how much I'd love to vote for Secret Lesbian Hilary Clinton? Because I really, really, really would.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:43 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I would prefer to vote for completely Out and Proud Hillary Clinton than Secret Lesbian Hillary Clinton if we are buying into the apparent assumption that she's a closeted lesbian but who am I kidding I am totally voting for her no matter what.
posted by vuron at 9:46 AM on June 13, 2016


Me too but it feels kind of gross to be speculating--even in jest--about her sexuality.
posted by dersins at 9:49 AM on June 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


I've been sort of waiting expectantly all day for Trump or one of his henchpersons to float the idea that the Orlando shooting was carried out by Clinton/Obama operatives to distract us from the powerful speech he was going to give about Vince Foster etc tonight
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:52 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Me too but it feels kind of gross to be speculating--even in jest--about her sexuality.

Me three but I think it would be important and useful to describe the particular Hillary Clinton we'd most like to vote for.

Me? Self-Replicating Nanotechnological Terror Weapon Hillary Clinton.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:03 AM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


(though I will vote for Regular Old Boring Human Biology Hillary Clinton too, even if she's less likely to assemble herself out of dust to politely tap some asshole on the shoulder and say "Are you sure you want to do that?")
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:08 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Highly Experienced Policy Wonk Hillary Clinton

why mess with it
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:09 AM on June 13, 2016 [26 favorites]


I've been sort of waiting expectantly all day for Trump or one of his henchpersons to float the idea that the Orlando shooting was carried out by Clinton/Obama operatives to distract us

You've been waiting all day? It happened last night.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:10 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


oh lord at this point i would vote for actual cannibal hillary clinton without a single qualm
posted by poffin boffin at 10:11 AM on June 13, 2016 [22 favorites]




Immortal Lamia Queen Hillary Clinton
Super-Deformed Chibi Mecha Hillary Clinton
Secretly Prolific Author of Novel-Length Falcon Crest Fanfic Hillary Clinton
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Clinton is speaking about the attack now. She started out with "today is not a day for politics" and then went on to talk about politics for some time. That's not a criticism, today is absolutely a day for politics. But it goes to show the amount of hypocrisy we require from our politicians.
posted by Justinian at 10:17 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Assistant DA For Eight Seasons Of SVU Hillary Clinton
Moonlit Secret Smoker Hillary Clinton
Crashing Bohemian Grove On A Dirt Bike Hillary Clinton
posted by theodolite at 10:22 AM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


When we were great...
(sometimes Tom Tomorrow and his penguin are too preachy, and sometimes they're perfect)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:31 AM on June 13, 2016


Did Trump give his shitty racist speech yet? Or is that tomorrow?
posted by Justinian at 10:33 AM on June 13, 2016


I believe he's been giving his shitty racist speech for at least a year now.
posted by dersins at 10:34 AM on June 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


I meant his new racist speech in response to the attack. Apparently he hasn't given it yet, it's in an hour or so. I will watch as much of it as I can without exploding.
posted by Justinian at 10:43 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Maybe just read the hot takes.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:47 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


So trump "called her out" for not saying the phrase radical islam, and then she did thismorning on the today show?

Ugh.
posted by emptythought at 10:49 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


you could just punch yourself in the face a few times instead and it would probably be less terrible.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:50 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Was just talking with a friend last night about how maybe Trump isn't REALLY racist/Islamophobic/etc. it's all an act to get Republican votes for some obscure scheme that sounds like hardcore trolling. Said friend also rolled out "keep in mind Trump couldn't ACTUALLY build a wall..."

May this latest Trump speech finally talk some sense into such people.
posted by Sara C. at 10:51 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The daily 'Surely this!'
posted by readery at 10:54 AM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


I feel like Trump's speech is like a snake that has been set loose in the house; I don't want to deal with it but I want to know what and how poisonous it is because this is kind of a test of my theory based on nothing is that Trump has some demagogical genius to him. If he can play the notes right, he might be able to whip up a froth of hatred up not just against Muslims but people who say wait it's about other shit as those people being blinded by PC.

I mean I hope he just collapses in a blather that the most racist Trump supporter will be like wait a minute, but there's some reason Trump got this far.
posted by angrycat at 10:55 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've been dreading Trump's speech about this since he announced he was going to give one.
posted by yasaman at 11:03 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wouldn't be nice if as a nation we could just decide that we don't need that bullshit right now and no one bothered to broadcast it?
posted by biogeo at 11:06 AM on June 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


So trump "called her out" for not saying the phrase radical islam, and then she did thismorning on the today show?

She has always talked tough on ISIS, I don't think it's surprising. She's right, "Radical Jihad" or "Radical Islamism" aren't really that far apart as terms. Is there a particular reason to object to one but not the other? Serious question. She is playing Trump's game there a bit but I think she had a reason. She is not going to allow Trump to portray her as soft on foriegn terrorism because it's not true and the suggestion has hurt Democrats in elections in the past.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:07 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]



Wouldn't be nice if as a nation we could just decide that we don't need that bullshit right now and no one bothered to broadcast it?


If that were at all likely to happen, there would never have been a Trump candidacy.
posted by bardophile at 11:09 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Was just talking with a friend last night about how maybe Trump isn't REALLY racist/Islamophobic/etc ... couldn't ACTUALLY build a wall...

I am completely bewildered by this line of thinking and how common it is. If someone's best defense of a candidate is that he's an opportunistic pathological liar who's unable to deliver on his core campaign promise, maybe they shouldn't support him in the first place?
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:10 AM on June 13, 2016 [21 favorites]


So trump "called her out" for not saying the phrase radical islam, and then she did thismorning on the today show?

If you heard her call or read the transcript, that article's framing seems pretty misleading, or at least attempting to take a quote out of context: Clinton: Orlando Rampage Was ‘Radical Islamism,’ But That's Not The Point
“I have clearly said many, many times we face terrorist enemies who use Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people,” the former Secretary of State said on MSNBC. “We have to defeat radical jihadist terrorism or radical Islamism, whatever you call it. It's the same.”

She continued: “But we cannot demonize, demagogue and declare war on an entire religion. That is just dangerous. And it plays into the hands of ISIS and other jihadist terrorists.”

During a call-in on NBC’s “Today," Clinton said, “it matters what we do, not what we say.”

“It matters that we got bin Laden, not what name we called him," she said, as quoted by Politico. Clinton went on to say the terms “mean the same thing.”

“To me, radical jihadism, radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing. I'm happy to say either, but that's not the point,” she said.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:12 AM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


Clinton previously said she didn't like the phrase "radical Islam" as it implies Islam is the enemy rather than jihadism (which don't forget targets Muslims more than non-Muslims). It seems she's decided that's a level of nuance beyond what the current political discourse is capable of supporting.
posted by biogeo at 11:13 AM on June 13, 2016 [19 favorites]


> that's a level of nuance beyond what the current political discourse is capable of supporting.

Story of our lives. What was it about getting the government we deserve?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:15 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I get the objection to "Radical Islam" or "Radical Islamism." What I don't get is why "Radical Jihad" which Clinton has previously used is really any better. Jihad is 100% linked with Islam and violence in the minds of Americans. It places the same emphasis on Islam in practice.

In addition, from the end of that article, CIA Director John Brennan, in a 2010 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the U.S. government avoided using either "jihadists" or "Islamists" to describe terrorists.

"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children," Brennan said.

posted by Drinky Die at 11:24 AM on June 13, 2016


Clinton previously said she didn't like the phrase "radical Islam" as it implies Islam is the enemy rather than jihadism (which don't forget targets Muslims more than non-Muslims). It seems she's decided that's a level of nuance beyond what the current political discourse is capable of supporting.

It also gives aid and comfort to the jihadists' claims that they speak for Islam, so deciding not to use the term is a deliberate strategic choice. As usual, the Republicans' criticism is not valid, or offered in good faith.
posted by Gelatin at 11:25 AM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]




I lament the apparent need of politicians to buy into the false narrative that this act of hate was a result of Radical Islam or whatever because of the color of this man's skin, his background and his self-professed allegiance to ISIS.

I feel like it just serves to victimize another minority group right the LGBT community was victimized. Islamophobia is not the correct response to this homophobic hate.

I also realize that in our 24 hour news cycle that politicians are as driven by the news cycle as we are and that despite there being evidence that this individual was not particularly motivated by religious fervor that it becomes necessary to condemn Radical Jihadi organizations like ISIS even though it's giving them much more credit than they deserve. Because of course if you look like you are soft on terrorism you'll lose the security mom vote or something.

An essential part of us has seemingly broken (or I don't know maybe it's always been broken) but it just becomes so easy to blame others rather than step up and accept accountability and a shared responsibility to fix things. I think we like to believe that our leaders are made of better stuff and they won't ever take the coward's way out and that they'll always lead with integrity but I guess in the end they are human just like the rest of us.
posted by vuron at 11:27 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wouldn't be nice if as a nation we could just decide that we don't need that bullshit right now and no one bothered to broadcast it?

It's like some of those group stage matches in the cups...I have little to zero interest but if it's on the TV I'm going to watch every stinking minute.
posted by malocchio at 11:30 AM on June 13, 2016


To be fair, vuron, if Republicans didn't have false narratives, they wouldn't have any narratives at all.
posted by Gelatin at 11:30 AM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Clinton using the magic phrase "radical Islam" is a smart and appropriate move. As has been noted, it doesn't matter one way or another, and it shuts down Trump's idiotic line of attack in a way that sets her up for success later.

Remember Romney getting owned by Obama in the debate when he claimed he never said the magic T word about the Benghazi attack? This is going to happen again.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:31 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


OH god, Trump is starting. He hasn't even said anything objectionable yet and I'm already dying.
posted by Justinian at 11:31 AM on June 13, 2016


He couldn't even keep his eyes closed during the moment of silence.
posted by johnpowell at 11:33 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Who is saying that 'radical Jihad' is better? (honest question, it's been a long thread)

Hillary Clinton.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:33 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


He couldn't even keep his eyes closed during the moment of silence.

I noticed that too. Of all the things to notice about this guy...but it weirded me out.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2016


Trump said the shooter was "born in Afghan". Assuming he meant Afghanistan... wasn't he born in New York City?
posted by Justinian at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


the argument, insofar as I can tell, is that if you avoid emphasizing the "Islam" part you are being Politically Correct and are therefore too weak to fight terror.

it is a very dumb argument.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:35 AM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Basically Republicans want to jump over everything straight to the bigotry and are pissed off at any attempt to focus on the actual terrorists.
posted by Artw at 11:35 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Trump refuses to say the name of the killer, and says he never will.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:35 AM on June 13, 2016


I am heartsick about this attack. Every time I think of it I feel drowned in sorrow. But I am also becoming absolutely enraged by Trump's relentless exploitation of Orlando to grab headlines and attention. He is literally reveling in the blood of innocent LGBT people slain by exactly the kind of hater Trump is empowering these days.
posted by bearwife at 11:36 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Or, you know, find out what the fuck is going on before dumping on the role they already wanted to dump on.
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on June 13, 2016


Trump said the shooter was "born in Afghan". Assuming he meant Afghanistan... wasn't he born in New York City?

He stopped himself, and then said born of Afghan parents or something along those lines.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:36 AM on June 13, 2016


He's doubling down hard on the anti-Muslim ban.
posted by Justinian at 11:37 AM on June 13, 2016


Of all the people to adopt the "Some Asshole" rule...
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:37 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


He's doubling down hard on the anti-Muslim ban.

Which would have done nothing to exclude this shooter, as he was born here.
posted by Gelatin at 11:39 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Trump refuses to let the USA become a country where gay people or Jews are the target of hate by radical Islamic preachers. No word yet on whether he's okay with them being the target of hate by radical Christian preachers.

Accidentally put that one in the other thread and had to flag myself ;x
posted by Justinian at 11:40 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


My stream crapped out and won't start again. Thanks Comcast, sometimes your broken products break at the right times.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:40 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Haha, great, he's doubling down. Of course. Someone let me know if my Afghan-American, born in Germany, naturalized citizen ass is going to have to register in a database or be on a watch list in the Trump hellscape version of the US.
posted by yasaman at 11:42 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Trump's logic is starkly incoherent. He says the shooting wouldn't have happened if we hadn't let the shooter's parents into the country, then clarifies that his proposed ban on immigrants would be temporary until we figure out how to do immigration correctly.

But what does that even mean in this context? Temporary until we can detect when two people immigrating to a country are capable of breeding in a way that produces a spree killer? How does this work even in the best possible case?
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:43 AM on June 13, 2016 [29 favorites]


Which would have done nothing to exclude this shooter, as he was born here.

In the same city as Trump, even.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:44 AM on June 13, 2016


The terrible thing is that I think this is a winning issue for Trump. Not because he's right but because there are a lot of people who don't think of themselves as bigoted and who consider themselves middle of the road who pee themselves at the very mention of the word "Islam" who will buy his crap.
posted by Justinian at 11:45 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Now he's saying he wants people to (possibly illegally in many cases) arm themselves against Muslims.

This, too, will end in blood.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Trump refuses to say the name of the killer, and says he never will.

Because he doesn't know how to pronounce it.
posted by biogeo at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Trump: "I refuse to be politically correct."
posted by peeedro at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2016


FUCK TRUMP.
posted by defenestration at 11:47 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


But what does that even mean in this context?

It means whatever Trump wants to claim it does, to whatever audience he's seeking approval from, at any given point in time.
posted by Gelatin at 11:48 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


How can Trump simultaneously claim that Clinton has no plan and that her plan will cost hundreds of millions of dollars?
posted by Justinian at 11:51 AM on June 13, 2016


because he's a barely sentient pile of dog doo, i've literally stepped in things more capable of rational thought than he is
posted by poffin boffin at 11:53 AM on June 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Bigly. Oh my god. He said it. Clear as day. Bigly.
posted by Justinian at 11:55 AM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm glad that I trust Clinton's ability to deal with Trump's bullshit. I get so frustrated and upset just thinking about it. We have a tough fight ahead of us.
posted by defenestration at 11:55 AM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]




Hearing coherent, meaningful ideas in a Trump speech is like seeing a cloud that looks like a dick. It's word pareidolia
posted by theodolite at 11:56 AM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


Is it me or is this speech a lot more incoherent and nonsensical than his usual?
posted by zarq at 11:56 AM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think that what is happening right now is that Trump is doing an amazing job convincing Bernie supporters and other liberal-leaning undecideds to vote for Clinton. This is the most frightened I have ever been of Trump. He will simply lie outright about even the most serious issues. I no longer see any limit to what he would do in office.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 11:57 AM on June 13, 2016 [14 favorites]


"He says the shooting wouldn't have happened if we hadn't let the shooter's parents into the country..."

And he wouldn't be giving this speech if we hadn't let his mother into the country. Huh.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:58 AM on June 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


Well, he's a racist, so yes.
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


"Defending racial profiling" is his WHOLE PLATFORM.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:01 PM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


And now he's, uh, defending racial profiling?

Worse, he's saying that any Muslim who isn't constantly announcing they're not affiliated with any potential suspect is themselves a suspect.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:01 PM on June 13, 2016


NO DOGWHISTLES is his entire platform.
posted by Artw at 12:02 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


And in this case "suspect"="can be arrested at will"
posted by zombieflanders at 12:02 PM on June 13, 2016


Make no mistake, this fucker gets elected he'll be putting people in camps. That's not even a Godwin now.
posted by Artw at 12:03 PM on June 13, 2016 [18 favorites]


Trump has deviated quite a bit from the teleprompter in this speech.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:03 PM on June 13, 2016


So wait is he going full repeal the 14th amendment because a lot of tea party types seem to want to remove birthright citizenship because "Muh anchor babies" but I figured that was a step too far for someone to try to take in a Presidential election but this is of course Trump and he can't be contained by political calculus.
posted by vuron at 12:04 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]




"Bigly. Oh my god. He said it. Clear as day. Bigly."

I'm 99% sure that he's saying "big league". It's a common idiom.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:04 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


NO DOGWHISTLES is his entire platform.

Do they count as dogwhistles if you're screaming them openly?
posted by nubs at 12:09 PM on June 13, 2016


The terrible thing is that I think this is a winning issue for Trump.

The betting odds on Ms. Clinton have gone up to 2.6 to 1 for what it's worth.
posted by bukvich at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Remember how Clinton is close in Utah? Now she's running even when you factor in Gary Johnson.

This feels more and more like 1968 every day.
posted by dw at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I don't mean the issue will win the election for him just that I think he gets more votes than he loses by being a racist dummo.
posted by Justinian at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2016


Do they count as dogwhistles if you're screaming them openly?

I've been saying for weeks that the only thing different about Trump is that he's saying the quiet parts loud.

Chumps like Paul Ryan know Trump is bad for the Republican brand, because he's ripping the mask off the polite facade they use to pretend they don't make racial appeals.
posted by Gelatin at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Yeah, I've no time whatsoever for their crocodile tears on that front.
posted by Artw at 12:18 PM on June 13, 2016


Is it me or is this speech a lot more incoherent and nonsensical than his usual?

Yes.
1) he's really bad at reading off a teleprompter, no charisma, sad.
2) his speechwriter isn't anywhere close to being about to write in his voice, so he's fighting an uphill battle, leading to lines like "we need to know if he travelled anywhere, and who he travelled" and "people will have consequences". He mangles and drops words what don't fit his natural cadence.
3) he interjects with his own Trumpisms, his Palin-esque segues to other topics. These happen only he looks forward, instead off to the sides reading the teleprompter and are the only times he modulates his tone of voice to something other than monotone shouting.
posted by peeedro at 12:20 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


There are few bigger examples of sexim in politics than the fact that Sarah Palin's word-salad gibberish sunk a presidential campaign and Trump's equally incoherent gibberish gives him a decent shot at winning.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:25 PM on June 13, 2016 [30 favorites]


Sounds like he's low energy.

Maybe he needs more centipede and meme power flowing to him.

Too bad all the TRUMP MAGA reddit bros are probably still asleep or they could've given him their power.
posted by vuron at 12:26 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh how I long for Palin's impressionistic northwoods mouth jazz
posted by theodolite at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


It takes a real winner to tirelessly stack so many dead into a platform from which to shout their self-promotion.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:32 PM on June 13, 2016


Maybe he needs more centipede and meme power flowing to him.

つ ◕_◕ ༽つ TAKE MY ENERGY TRUMP ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
TRUMP WILL MAKE ANIME REAL! IT'S AN AWOOVEMENT!
TBCheesePull BUILD THE WALL TBCheesePull
posted by Talez at 12:33 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh how I long for Palin's impressionistic northwoods mouth jazz

You sure about that?
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:34 PM on June 13, 2016


Oh look. He learned a new word.
"Even her former Secret Service Agent, who has seen her under pressure and in times of stress, has stated that she lacks the temperament and integrity to be president."

posted by zarq at 12:36 PM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


According to his former wife's book under times of stress he's a spousal rapist, so I'm not really sure he wants to push that one too far.
posted by Artw at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2016


> But what does that even mean in this context? Temporary until we can detect when two people immigrating to a country are capable of breeding in a way that produces a spree killer? How does this work even in the best possible case?

You're not supposed to *think* about it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:39 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


USA Today:
Hillary Clinton called for unity, outreach to Muslims and the passage of gun-control measures in the wake of Sunday's terror attack in Orlando, while also rebuking presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
-
Clinton also called for the defeat of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, saying current efforts have shown some recent successes. She called for efforts to dismantle the networks that move terrorists' money and propaganda, while strengthening worldwide alliances and intelligence efforts to keep Europeans and Americans from joining ISIS.
-
“Americans from all walks of life rallied together with a sense of common purpose on Sept. 12," she said during her Cleveland remarks.

She also cited President Bush's trip to an Islamic center after 9/11.

“It is time to get back to the spirit of those days — the spirit of 9/12," Clinton said.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:46 PM on June 13, 2016


Oh Christ no, because by September 13th America was a vengeance crazed ghoul and went on an invasion spree that created ISIS, amongst other fuck-ups.
posted by Artw at 12:48 PM on June 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


“It is time to get back to the spirit of those days — the spirit of 9/12," Clinton said.

As long as there's no Lee Greenwood, we have a deal.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:48 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Democrats need to humanize immigration, fast. Tell the stories of the men, women and children who want to come here- show the American people what they're trying to escape! Defense is not enough, it's time to play offense here.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:49 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


There are few bigger examples of sexim in politics than the fact that Sarah Palin's word-salad gibberish sunk a presidential campaign and Trump's equally incoherent gibberish gives him a decent shot at winning.

"He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:49 PM on June 13, 2016


"Hillary Clinton – for months and despite so many attacks – repeatedly refused to even say the words “radical Islam,” until I challenged her yesterday to say the words or leave the race.

However, Hillary Clinton – who has been forced to say the words today after policies she supports have caused us so much damage – still has no clue what Radical Islam is, and won’t speak honestly about what it is."

Wow that Hillary person sounds like a really stupid woman-- she has caused all these problems and she doesn't even know what Radical Islam is. Maybe Donald Trump should force her to leave the race! And she is going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars letting thousands of people come here -- I think she must be putting them up in Trump Towers. Just shows that she doesn't know how to budget very well.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:50 PM on June 13, 2016




“Americans from all walks of life rallied together with a sense of common purpose on Sept. 12," she said during her Cleveland remarks.

She also cited President Bush's trip to an Islamic center after 9/11.

“It is time to get back to the spirit of those days — the spirit of 9/12," Clinton said.


This is really embarrassing from Clinton. As an Indian-American friend of mine said on Facebook, "I think she remembers a different 9/12 than I do." To say nothing of praising George W. Bush for tolerance of Islam, which is only further evidence for Sanders supporters that the Democrats are going to take them for granted so they can snap up disaffected Republicans.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:55 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


dw: "This feels more and more like 1968 every day."

I said it in the other thread - this election is REALLY making me think of this alternate history story. And I do NOT like it.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:57 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


She's doing the Nancy Reagan thing again.
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


When I think "9/12" I think USA PATRIOT Act. Which is no small part of what I've been fearing from Trump.
posted by Phyltre at 12:59 PM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


She's doing the Nancy Reagan thing again.

Who is?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:00 PM on June 13, 2016


I'm confused. You're mad that Clinton tried to appeal to people's decency by noting that Bush visited an Islamic Center after 9/11? She wasn't saying "George Bush was spot on when it came to dealing with Muslims!" She was saying "even Bush wasn't as big of a fuckwit against Muslims as you all are being right now."

One candidate is trying to appeal to our better natures; the other is fanning the flames of this shit.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:03 PM on June 13, 2016 [29 favorites]


I remember what Clinton does: on 9/12 Americans came together, and our allies and friends around the world united with us in grief and sympathy. The conflation of Islam with the extremist radicals who use terror in its name came later.

Also, I just got this, signed by Hillary, from the Clinton campaign in my email.

On Sunday, Americans woke up to a nightmare: Another act of terrorism in a place no one expected it, a man with a gun in his hands and hate in his heart, apparently consumed by rage against LGBT Americans -- and, by extension, against the openness and diversity that define our way of life.

No matter how many times we endure attacks like this, the horror never fades. The murder of innocent people always breaks our hearts, tears at our sense of security, and makes us furious.

So many of us are praying for everyone who was killed, for the wounded and those still missing, and for all the loved ones grieving today. As a mother, I can’t imagine what those families are going through.

But we owe their memories and their families more than prayer. We must also take decisive action to strengthen our international alliances and combat acts of terror, to keep weapons of war off our streets, and to affirm the rights of LGBT Americans -- and all Americans -- to feel welcome and safe in our country.

Here’s what we absolutely cannot do: We cannot demonize Muslim people.

Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. It’s no coincidence that hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques tripled after Paris and San Bernardino. Islamophobia goes against everything we stand for as a nation founded on freedom of religion, and it plays right into the terrorists’ hands.

We’re a big-hearted, fair-minded country. We teach our children that this is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all -- not just for people who look a certain way, or love a certain way, or worship a certain way.

I want to say this to all the LGBT people grieving today in Florida and across our country: You have millions of allies who will always have your back. I am one of them. From Stonewall to Laramie and now Orlando, we’ve seen too many examples of how the struggle to live freely, openly, and without fear has been marked by violence. We have to stand together. Be proud together. There is no better rebuke to the terrorists and all those who hate.

This fundamentally American idea -- that we’re stronger together -- is why I’m so confident that we can overcome the threats we face, solve our challenges at home, and build a future where no one’s left out or left behind. We can do it, if we do it together.

Thank you for standing together in love, kindness, and the best of what it means to be American.

posted by bearwife at 1:05 PM on June 13, 2016 [21 favorites]


This is really embarrassing from Clinton. As an Indian-American friend of mine said on Facebook, "I think she remembers a different 9/12 than I do." To say nothing of praising George W. Bush for tolerance of Islam

One of the few good things Bush did in office was spend the days after 9/11 pushing for non-violence, up to and including actually saying "Islam is a religion of peace."

which is only further evidence for Sanders supporters that the Democrats are going to take them for granted so they can snap up disaffected Republicans

I'm really not sure what she said here that would make Sanders supporters do that. And if she peels off Republicans disaffected by their party's bigotry, maybe that's a good thing?

She's doing the Nancy Reagan thing again.

No, she's not.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:05 PM on June 13, 2016 [29 favorites]


Specifically, this is what W said at the Islamic center after 9/11:
Thank you all very much for your hospitality. We've just had a -- wide-ranging discussions on the matter at hand. Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world. Both Americans and Muslim friends and citizens, tax-paying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our TV screens.

These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that.

The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.

When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race -- out of every race.

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That's not the America I know. That's not the America I value.

I've been told that some fear to leave; some don't want to go shopping for their families; some don't want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they're afraid they'll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.

This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth. And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do.

I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by. And may God bless us all.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:07 PM on June 13, 2016 [24 favorites]


Also, could we please make a new thread, some kind soul? This one has grown too long for functional posting or refreshing.
posted by bearwife at 1:08 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump is simultaneously denouncing and demanding political correctness.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:09 PM on June 13, 2016


Thank you zombieflanders for finding and posting that. The difference between Bush and Trump couldn't be more stark.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:09 PM on June 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


I remember 9/12 the same way that she does. Bush actually went out of his way not to demonize Islam.
posted by octothorpe at 1:09 PM on June 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Seconding the request for a new thread.
posted by stolyarova at 1:11 PM on June 13, 2016


Are we pretending plans for the Iraq invasion didn't come off the shelf that same day?
posted by Artw at 1:12 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's a pretty common observation that Republican rhetoric about Muslims has drastically changed for the worse since the Bush years, whether or not you think Bush was sincere about his comments in the vein of "Islam is a religion of peace.", "These were not the acts of real Muslims", etc.

By pointing this out, I disagree that HRC is toeing the GOP line. It's simply a way of pointing out that, as awful as things were during the Bush/Cheney years, under a Trump regime things will be even worse.
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:12 PM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yeah, Muslim American here, and while I remember being shit scared in the days after 9/11, I was actually fairly comforted by Bush's unwillingness to demonize Muslims or Muslim Americans. I'm no Bush fan, but I never felt like he was enabling or encouraging any anti-Muslim sentiment. His policies were another thing, obviously.
posted by yasaman at 1:13 PM on June 13, 2016 [24 favorites]


...this election is REALLY making me think of this alternate history story.

The Man in the High Condo ?

Bring the Jingoree ?
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM on June 13, 2016


Artw: "Are we pretending plans for the Iraq invasion didn't come off the shelf that same day?"

They might have been but they weren't made public to us.
posted by octothorpe at 1:14 PM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Are we pretending plans for the Iraq invasion didn't come off the shelf that same day?

No, what we're doing is we're deciding not to conflate what Bush did later in his term with how Bush acted on 9/12, since the focus of Clinton's speech was not a referendum on Bush's presidency but his action in the days immediately after 9/11.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:14 PM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


From September 17, 2001:
Reports of hate crimes against Muslims and southeast Asians have risen exponentially across the U.S. in the wake of Tuesday's terror attacks. [...]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it received more than 300 reports of harassment and abuse from Tuesday through Thursday night, nearly half the number it received all last year. Khalid Iqbal, director of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, says cases range from families being spat and yelled at, "Go back to your country," to assaults on people and businesses.

In Mesa, Arizona, a man was charged with first-degree murder Sunday in connection with a series of shootings that police said could be a racially-motivated response to last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Mesa police said Francisco Roque, 42, was being held on a $1 million bond in the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, a Chevron gas station owner. Sodhi, from Punjab, India, was shot to death while doing landscaping outside his business Saturday afternoon.

Many Sikhs believe he is the first to have been killed in retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:15 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


As a reminder, when the Islamophobes mockingly say "Islam is a religion of peace," they're quoting Dubya.

Yeah, his security policies were anti-Muslim, and the PATRIOT Act was an atrocity on all our civil liberties, but he really believed that Islam itself was not the problem.
posted by dw at 1:16 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


2016 PBO: *poof* PRIZE BULL OCTOROK! I come from the future to bring you visions of days yet to come
2001 PBO: wow awesome, what are we doing in 2016?
2016 PBO: we are waxing nostalgic for the wise and humane leadership of George W. Bush
2001 PBO: what
2016 PBO: yup
2001 PBO: are you fucking kidding me
2016 PBO: well it's in a pretty specific context, but still
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:17 PM on June 13, 2016 [56 favorites]


J.K. Seazer, those anti-Muslim attacks are directly referenced in the speech that zombieflanders posted. Bush explicitly called such actions unAmerican. "Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior."

But yes, the country was not a bowl of roses after 9/11, that is true.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:18 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]




So, some better examples of Trump's speech-mangling now that I can replay the video and compare with the printed remarks.

"Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's LGBT Community."

gets turned into "Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Or-lawn-do's LGBT Community -- they have been through something that nobody could ever experience."

What does that even mean? Is this real life, is this just fantasy? How can people experience something that can never be experienced?

"We have an incompetent administration, and if I am not elected President, that will not change over the next four years -- but it must change, and it must change now."

gets turned into "We have an incompetent administration, and if I'm elected President, that will not change, I will tell you, that will not change over the next four years. We have an administration that will not change, but if I get in there it's going to change and it's going to change quickly. We're going from totally incompetent to just the opposite, believe me."

He realized he skipped a "not" turning the statement into a inadvertent self-diss, so turn it around he has to add two sentences of bluster rendering the entire passage incomprehensible.
posted by peeedro at 1:20 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Maybe rather than dragging this debate about the 9/12 comments into the new thread, we can all try to be charitable and acknowledge that Hillary was trying to cite the good parts of how we Americans and our leaders responded in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and not longing for the days when we were looking for countries to invade.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:22 PM on June 13, 2016 [17 favorites]


"We have an incompetent administration, and if I am not elected President, that will not change over the next four years -- but it must change, and it must change now."

This incoherent blather is from the written speech?? Who wrote it, Kang or Kodos?
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


From September 17, 2001

Yes, those are exactly the same things that Bush condemned in the speech that I posted above. I'm not sure how you think that proves that Bush was being horrible to Muslims, and by extension Clinton is somehow both as "bad" as he allegedly was, or how you think this is a sop to the current GOP to spite Sanders voters.

Look, I get that some Sanders voters are still upset. There are differences between the things that he and Clinton speak about, and where she is closer to the GOP of 2016 than he is. But this is not one of them. It's a huge reach, and does a disservice to actual outreach.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


He realized he skipped a "not" turning the statement into a inadvertent self-diss, so turn it around he has to add two sentences of bluster rendering the entire passage incomprehensible.

What a walking garbage pile. I don't know if I can take many more weeks of wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.
posted by Salieri at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Semi-automatic weapons for some, miniature human hands for others.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:24 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's amusing that someone who makes fun of Clinton and Obama for using a teleprompter, can't actually use one himself.
posted by octothorpe at 1:24 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Instead of "radical Islam", American politicians should just use theological terms like Takfiris and Khawarij to not only co-opt the phrases of the radicals, but to speak their own language.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:25 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Welcome to 2016, when we wish the GOP was running someone as enlightened and moderate as George Walker Bush.
posted by dw at 1:27 PM on June 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Here is a new thread for you.

Our poor mod team.
posted by peeedro at 1:28 PM on June 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


where is the kickstarter to buy the mods benzos
posted by poffin boffin at 1:33 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


If what Clinton is calling for is the President to say some nice words, he already did. If what she is calling for is the national unity of 9/12, well that never existed. A wave of hate crimes started immediately and never really stopped as far as I can tell once hated of Islam got a major place in the national consciousness. Bush and 9/12 is just not a good example to use here. It was not the start of a good time for America.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:35 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am legit perplexed as to why someone would choose to expend the effort required to formulate such an uncharitable reading of Clinton's words.
posted by dersins at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2016 [18 favorites]


She is just trying to appeal to decency and community. She's not endorsing George Bush for a third term. On this day of all days when it was finally made absolutely clear just how horrifying Trump is, that he is in fact a craven demagogue who will use even the greatest tragedy to grab as much power as possible and to endanger the lives of millions of fellow Americans -- what is truly important is parsing every word of Clinton's speech and giving it the most uncharitable interpretation possible. Really? I don't get it. Maybe that's the point.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2016 [21 favorites]


Maybe rather than dragging this debate about the 9/12 comments into the new thread, we can all try to be charitable and acknowledge that Hillary was trying to cite the good parts of how we Americans and our leaders responded in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and not longing for the days when we were looking for countries to invade.

I don't intend to carry on this discussion in the new thread. And I know that that's what Hillary was trying to do. But in addition to what she did intentionally, there are other things she did unintentionally. The point of my citing the immediate spike in Islamophobic hate crimes was not to talk about what Bush said or didn't say, but to refute the idea that Americans "came together" as a country on 9/12. On 9/12, Americans laid the groundwork for a new regime of Islamophobia that shows no signs of abating. There are brown and Muslim Americans who will vote in this coming election who were too young to remember whatever nice things Bush might have said in a speech on 9/12, but sure as hell know what 9/12 means for the way they are treated and perceived every day. And when Hillary talks about getting back to the spirit of 9/12, she fails to realize this meaning that is far more relevant for Americans living today than some speech Bush gave when they were 2.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:46 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


As much as 9/12 was not particularly great, there were aspects of it that were a heck of a lot better than today. Compare: Bush speaking at the Islamic Center and directly stating that Islam is a nation of peace, quoting from the Koran rather than viewing it as some kind of toxic symbol no politician could get close to; vs Trump renewing a call for a ban on Muslims and suggesting the President could be in cahoots with terrorists. No, 9/12 was not a shining beacon of tolerance, and some people did some incredibly shitty things to some of their fellow Americans out of hate, but what we're doing right now feels an awful lot worse in so many ways, and that's important to recognize.
posted by zachlipton at 1:46 PM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


...than some speech Bush gave when they were 2.

Every once in a while, this place makes me feel very old. :P
posted by zarq at 1:50 PM on June 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


I am legit perplexed as to why someone would choose to expend the effort required to formulate such an uncharitable reading of Clinton's words

Habit?
posted by happyroach at 1:52 PM on June 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'm 99% sure that he's saying "big league".

No, it is definitely bigly. Sorry. The universe is not that kind.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:52 PM on June 13, 2016


And when Hillary talks about getting back to the spirit of 9/12, she fails to realize this meaning that is far more relevant for Americans living today than some speech Bush gave when they were 2.

This seems more like an insult to the collective intelligence of Muslim voters than fact-based criticism of what Clinton's message is.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:53 PM on June 13, 2016


On this day of all days when it was finally made absolutely clear just how horrifying Trump is, that he is in fact a craven demagogue who will use even the greatest tragedy to grab as much power as possible and to endanger the lives of millions of fellow Americans -- what is truly important is parsing every word of Clinton's speech and giving it the most uncharitable interpretation possible.

Criticizing Hillary regarding this particular speech doesn't stop anyone from talking about how bad Trump is. Do you want my assurance that I will vote for Hillary? Then I give it to you. I will vote for Hillary. I will not vote for Trump. I do not think that Hillary and Trump are the same. Etc.

This discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I'm bailing.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:54 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is really embarrassing from Clinton. As an Indian-American friend of mine said on Facebook, "I think she remembers a different 9/12 than I do." To say nothing of praising George W. Bush for tolerance of Islam, which is only further evidence for Sanders supporters that the Democrats are going to take them for granted so they can snap up disaffected Republicans.

We are not living in the same world or something. This is Sanders' response:
From what is now known, this was a terrorist act by an ISIS sympathizer. That despicable and barbaric organization must be destroyed.
Unless you mean that Clinton wasn't strong enough in condeming radical Islam, unlike the hawkish Sanders. But I don't think you meant that!
posted by Justinian at 1:55 PM on June 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


And when Hillary talks about getting back to the spirit of 9/12, she fails to realize this meaning that is far more relevant for Americans living today than some speech Bush gave when they were 2.

Apparently “Americans living today” means “Americans younger than eighteen” - or, as I like to call them, nonvoters.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:56 PM on June 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


She is just trying to appeal to decency and community.

By referencing an indecent man who tore apart a large part of the Muslim world with war, violence, and torture. We are still experiencing the backlash from that. People don't remember a speech. They remember this.

I get it, he meets the lowest possible political bar: He's not Donald Trump. I'm not saying otherwise, but to my mind that's not good enough to hold up as much of an example either based on superficial words not backed up by actions. There are plenty of ways to talk about national unity that do not include praising George W. Bush at all.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:58 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


There are plenty of ways to talk about national unity that do not include praising George W. Bush at all.

I don't think you're parsing the subtext correctly here.

I read it not as Clinton saying "W was good," but as her saying "Even W was better than this."
posted by dersins at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2016 [26 favorites]


Obama did the same thing with Reagan, talking about what a great president Reagan was. It's a pivot-to-the-centre trope.
posted by clawsoon at 2:14 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Read Hillary Clinton’s Speech About the Orlando Shooting
And finally,

(APPLAUSE) finally let me remind us all, I remember, I remember how it felt, on the day after 9/11, and I bet many of you do as well. Americans from all walks of life rallied together with a sense of common purpose on September the 12th and in the days and weeks and months that followed. We had each others’ backs. I was a senator from New York. There was a Republican president, a Republican governor, and a Republican mayor. We did not attack each other. We worked with each other to protect our country and to rebuild our city (ph).

(APPLAUSE)

President Bush went to a Muslim community center just six days after the attacks to send a message of unity and solidarity. To anyone who wanted to take out their anger on our Muslim neighbors and fellow citizens, he said, “That should not, and that will not, stand in America.” It is time to get back to the spirit of those days, spirit of 9/12. Let’s make sure we keep looking to the best of our country, to the best within each of us. Democratic and Republican presidents have risen to the occasion in the face of tragedy. That is what we are called to do my friends and I am so confident and optimistic that is exactly what we will do.

Thank you all so much.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:17 PM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yes that is the text
posted by dersins at 2:21 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


"the spirit of 9/12" is not that inaccurate a phrase. There was an effort to prevent overreacting to the Attacks of Opportunity, but they only lasted for about a day.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:24 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yes that is the text

You accused me of intentionally being uncharitable by suggesting she was referring to the national sense of unity after 9/11. Can you explain what this sentence means to you: Americans from all walks of life rallied together with a sense of common purpose on September the 12th and in the days and weeks and months that followed. We had each others’ backs.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think it's a fair criticism to note that Clinton did not really acknowledge the non-trivial number of people who did not feel united on 9/12 and who were suddenly looked upon with suspicion by their neighbors, not to mention those who were the target of actual hate crimes up and and including murder (on 9/15). Their voices are important and that shouldn't be smoothed over in our memory of the aftermath of 9/11. I also think that we know what Clinton meant, and her broader message about not denigrating over a billion people around the world, and we know what Trump actually said today, and that nitpicking this isn't that important.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on June 13, 2016 [22 favorites]


It also seems fair to read her statements as being from her own experience, as one of the senators from New York. There was one sentence in there that was somewhat of a generalization ("Americans from all walks of life rallied together with a sense of common purpose"), but it also isn't necessarily a statement that negates others' experiences of that time.

Again as I said in the other thread I'm not wild about this whole line of thought because 9/11 sucked and opened a Pandora's box of terrible things, and I think it's cutting it very fine to describe in a positive light this range of 2 or 3 days before the first actual hate crimes. It was just way too complicated of a time to be this easy.

On the other hand I get her ultimate point and there's no real reason to dissect this as hard as we are currently dissecting it. She means that people should be coming together during the aftermath of a tragic event, not scoring hate-filled political points.
posted by Sara C. at 3:21 PM on June 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Man, but that 9/12 bit is good. Great stuff.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:27 PM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


"The Spirit of 9/12" is Glen Beck's phrasing. I think it's a big mistake for Hillary to use it.
posted by vibrotronica at 3:31 PM on June 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Look! A molehill! Where are the rhetorical equivalents of eleven thousand three story tall strip mine dumptrucks when you need them !? Well, never fear, we'll make a mountain out of this in no time!
posted by y2karl at 3:43 PM on June 13, 2016 [8 favorites]




We have to overthink Hillary's plate of beans because Donald's Taco Bowl is so inedible that just inhaling the aroma will require a stomach pump to recover. There's no amount of evil Hillary is capable of that would make Donald the lesser of two. But with all the other downticket races, a certain vigilance is useful in maybe keeping your local Senator or Congresscritter from making the same mistakes. And besides, it really is better for our collective mental health than following Donald's latest trolling tweets.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:58 PM on June 13, 2016


(Slight derail: the weirdest thing that the spirit of 9/12 gave us was meetup.com, since the founders were partly motivated by the spirit of community that flowed between New Yorkers post-9/11.)
posted by Going To Maine at 4:19 PM on June 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


"We have an incompetent administration, and if I am not elected President, that will not change over the next four years -- but it must change, and it must change now."

remember that the english are technically foreigners, donnie - this is why you should continue to mangle their language until they surrender
posted by pyramid termite at 5:02 PM on June 13, 2016


Former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank says Orlando shooting reinforces case for surveillance of 'Islamic Element'

"It's an attack against gay people but it does not reflect a general deterioration of our standing in America," he said. "It reflects the virulence of the hatred in this sector of Islam."
posted by Drinky Die at 8:44 PM on June 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


We have to overthink Hillary's plate of beans because Donald's Taco Bowl is so inedible

The Taco Bowl and the Plate of Beans was always my favorite of Aesop's fables.
posted by dis_integration at 5:40 AM on June 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


The idea of the parents being super duper strict and religious, but not violent, and the son being a self-hating gay guy who resented the other gay guys at the nightclub for the things they "made" him do and eventually shot the place up with a gun... it's such a classic American story, you know? All these elements, religon, guns, toxic masculinity, self-loathing. It really is hard to point a finger and say the problem lies with "them" in a case like that, even though no doubt the disgust within Islam (though not throughout Islam) for homosexuality definitely played a role. That dynamic between parent and child and within men who aren't able to llbe what they're told they should be is just everywhere in American society. And mass-shootings are a thing in our culture.

Sadly the whole thing makes so much more sense in this context... even the "swearing allegiance to ISIS" which is such a clear attempt to opt out of American culture its "temptations" and conflicts and contradictions. I don't think "Islamic terrorism" has anything to do with this story beyond being a way to symbolicly reject American society, for someone who felt he couldn't live in that society anymore.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:07 AM on June 14, 2016 [13 favorites]


"It's an attack against gay people but it does not reflect a general deterioration of our standing in America," he said. "It reflects the virulence of the hatred in this sector of Islam."

Good thing there are no LGBTQ people who look 'Muslim' then.

The one silver lining is that our community has said with one voice (so far) that we will not allow ourselves to be divided against another group, we will resist Islamophobia and stand against hatred in all its forms.

Barney Frank's words here have made all of us who are brown and live or work or play in queer spaces a little less safe.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:33 AM on June 14, 2016 [11 favorites]


And Barney Frank -- Barney Frank, of all people! -- should not be calling out homophobia as a foreign thing. It's as American as apple pie and Jim Crow. This country has to own that.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:35 AM on June 14, 2016 [19 favorites]


Umm, did the thread break?
posted by museum of fire ants at 3:52 PM on June 14, 2016






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