I just read the excerpt from Michael Wolff’s new book in New York Magazine. Holy fucking hell, we are fucking fucked.
I can’t possibly add to it. Just go read it. I recommend a quiet corner where your expletives and angry gestures won’t disturb anyone.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it lest we forget.
The ones ultimately responsible, the ones who will have the Calamity’s blood on their hands, are the 60m+ who voted for him, and who continue to support him, hooting and hollering like monkeys at the pain and suffering being inflicted on others. They are not Good People. The thing that terrifies me most is that when the Trump regime has been destroyed and the Left takes some form of power again, that we will once again extend our infinite forgiveness; we’ll pooh-pooh them as poor suffering desperates backed into a corner who made a boo-boo, and watch our representatives prostrating themselves before THOSE PEOPLE to appeal for their votes. They are the ones who should come begging to us for undeserved crumbs, proving their worth giving a SHIT about, not us jumping through hoops for their entertainment before they go off to vote, as they always do, for whoever promises to fuck US up the most.
Sorry if I sound vicious. But in a country where a movement called Black Lives Matters exists, and is countered by conservative naysaying All Lives Matter; where THEY laughed as LGBT people died of AIDS; where THEY set up an office dedicated to portraying immigrant lives as criminal through WWII-era propaganda; where THEY sent Muslim lives back to certain death; in a country where one factions screams that my life, and the lives of everyone I care about, don’t matter and they want to kill us – I have no compassion to give for their lives anymore. Let. Them. Rot.
We’re going to take our country back, and we’re going to make it a place where we can live OUR lives in peace and prosperity, and nobody will take that away.
I read snippets in a Guardian article about the book. I’m not sure my blood could stand the boil of a full-blown excerpt.
The Guardian focuses on Bannon’s comments about the Trump Tower meeting. For once I agree with him, although I think he’s ass covering like crazy because I’m confident that the Bannon/Mercer/Breitbart/Cambridge Analytica machine were playing with troll farms wherever they were, including Russia.
Trump has already slammed Bannon. No surprise.
OMG even Rupert Murdoch called Trump an idiot…over immigration of all things.
May they all join each other in their own little Sartresque No Exit Hell and rot there for a very long eternity.
I don’t buy the “Trump wanted to lose” claim. I can believe he tried to give that impression (to limit the damage to his ego if he lost), and that he did not expect to win, but if he didn’t want to win the election (which is different from wanting the job of President), he could have dropped out, citing health reasons, at any point.
I’ve long thought that Trump’s primary motivation was to have a rousing response from the crowds. He craves adulation. He has no opinions, no knowledge, no strategies, he just wants to hear the crowd roar. He’ll say whatever gets a positive response from his base, or just like a child breaking the china to get mom’s attention, he loves to be hated by the liberals. Notice me! Notice me! Make me think I matter!
He’s good at reading a crowd and giving it what it wants. Running a country? Oh my
KG, his ego has trapped him in the job. If he walks out, even his own ego won’t be able to tell him that he was the bestest ever president.
I thought through most of the campaign that it was just a publicity stunt and groundwork for his own network.
I’m almost sad we didn’t get to see him create and fail a network within a year or two.
davidnangle@5,
Yes, I agree, and I think Wolff does too. But before the election, he could have dropped out and maintained: “I would have won by a landslide, if my doctor hadn’t told me to”.
It’s actually somewhat reassuring if he didn’t want the responsibility – maybe he’ll keep shirking it and playing golf. Because when that ignart actually tries to accomplish anything, it ends badly.
Clarifying #6 – I agree, that is, that his ego has now trapped him in the job. But I think he always wanted to win, whatever he may have said – actions speak louder than words.
It’s interesting that Bannon has not denied the quotes Wolff attributes to him. Pro-Trump and pro-Bannon factions are apparently biting and clawing each other on Breitbart.
Trump didn’t win, Hillary Clinton lost.
The Democratic party failed its base and voters turned on them. Their message wasn’t “Yes, we want Trump.” It was “No, we don’t want any more neoliberal bullshit.” But since they’re deplorables, they spelled neoliberal with a Hillary.
Curse this truth all you like but had She run an actual campaign (instead of outsourcing $700MM to 5 insider consultant firms with abysmal records), Trump would be hosting a TV show right now.
It wasn’t a campaign. It was a cult of personality. People get over campaigns but no one escapes involvement with a cult unscarred. Campaign staff stop talking and start drinking. Cultists blame everyone else and lash out at any criticism of their leader no matter how fair or credible.
I’m sure their thoughtful discussions have given each other pause as they gracefully consider each others’ measured and wise responses…
@6, KG
That would mean admitting to being unhealthy. The biggest shortcoming I’ve ever seen this man admit to is misspeaking.
Whether Trump wanted to win or not, it’s clear that he didn’t expect to (the deer-in-the-headlights reaction on election night is pretty telling, and whether Trump wanted to BE president or not, it’s clear he never wanted to DO president.
KG — Wolff is saying that Trump and his organization didn’t expect to win. Even days before the election there were only hints of a chance. The day before the election Kelly Anne was shopping for her next job in broadcasting. Anyway, it was too late for him to drop out. If he had dropped out that late, it would have hurt his real goal which was promoting his brand.
In fact, to his enteral dismay, he didn’t win the popular vote but he did win enough key districts in a few key states (Michigan, Pennsylvania) to give him the Electoral College. I don’t think he planned that himself nor anyone in his inner circle (the boys, Jared, Ivanka). They aren’t smart enough to know how to use the social media micro-marketing techniques used to swing those districts. However, Bannon and the Mercers do understand those techniques and have the tools (and trolls) available to do it.
Mark Gielson: ‘The Democratic party failed its base and voters turned on them. Their message wasn’t “Yes, we want Trump.”’
Yeah, well you got Trump, and you got him because a bunch of fucking whiners couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a woman. How’s that working out for you.
To #14: if a majority of American voters-who-voted could elect a black man named “Hussein” — twice! — , they will elect a woman. Ms. Clinton was a bad candidate who ran a poor campaign.
With any luck, to the same fate as the Kilkenny cats.
But losing would have meant he was a loser! That’s a far bigger shortcoming than admitting to a health scare – which could be blamed on an incompetent medic afterwards.
That’s simply not the case. FiveThirtyEight always gave Trump a significant chance of winning – it never dropped much below 10% IIRC, certainly not below 5%. Anyone with a grain of sense would plan for the possibility of a 10% or 5% chance being realised, if the issue is at all serious. As for Trump’s reaction – up to election night, he was focused on his hatred for Obama, Clinton, and those parts of the media that failed to praise and flatter him; the reality of what he’d got himself into may indeed have penetrated his narcissistic carapace and caused a brief period of self-doubt, but that could happen whether or not he’d wanted to win.
Hello PZ. Big fan. I am struggling with certain biology concepts , and would be very happy if you could clarify for me:
1-How would you respond to creationists like meyer when they claim that mutations cannot create/increase information?
2- The DNA seems a lot like a “book of instructions”. How does the cell “know” that a certain sequence, like accctgga… represents a specific structure? How does it knw the meaning of dna and why does it read only certain parts of it?
3- What is the current best scientific explanation for the origin of life?
4- What is the best definition of “life”?
Thank you very much.
And however bad Clinton was Trump was manifestly worse, to the point of being inhuman. Any person with a “soul”, metaphorically speaking (and appropriate for the kind of people I’m talking about) would have voted for her. Her loss wasn’t entirely born from her campaign, and even had she won it would still have been a loss because our electorate would be rotted to the point where a thing like Trump could even have a shot at the presidency.
This loss was born from decades of hate and insanity incubated by the Right, as they strategically shifted the Overton window rightward and Democrats jumped from center to center. They refused to call our enemies, Enemies, even as our enemies called for our blood. True leftists were marginalized as “pipe dreamers” whose ideas were impossible in the “current political climate”, with no regard to making a counterforce that would MOVE the political climate. And when it did change to the left, as in the years between Bill’s DADT and Obergefell, it was because millions of activists fought and bled for it, so that Clinton and yes, Obama and Biden, could run around at the tail end with rainbow flags and congratulate themselves on their “strategy”.
Clinton lost because the Right engineered it for decades while the Democrats spent their energy beating off the Left that rudely challenged their complacency. And we will keep losing, until we start to get real about what we’re trying to accomplish.
Hairhead,
It is not a coincidence that black men got the right to vote 55 years before women. I do not dispute that Hillary ran a crappy campaign or that she was a poor candidate. However, the antipathy toward her cannot be explained solely in terms of her shortcomings as a candidate. The right had 20 years to vilify her, but that does not mean that the Bernie Bros had to believe the rightwing propaganda.
aquinoflavio@18,
PZ is not your personal tutor. Your comment has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but there’s this thing called the “Internet”, and within it, things called “search engines”. These will help you find the information you ask for – if indeed, your enquiry is a sincere one, which I very much doubt.
I don’t give a damn about how crappy or poor Clinton’s candidacy or campaign was.
SHE COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE WORSE THAN TRUMP.
If there is a hell, there should be a special place in it for those whose antipathy for Clinton was so strong that they preferred to hand over the country to an incompetent egomaniac and his Nazi friends.
I liked Rupert Murdoch’s description of Trump as a “fucking idiot”.
Oh shit. That’s all I can say after reading the article. We are so totally fucked. But Myers beat me to that statement.
I imagine Hitler in his underground bunker, pistol barrel in his mouth, being told by excited aides that Germany had won the war — honest to fucking Jesus, at the last minute America and its allies had capitulated, and Soviet troops were already leaving Berlin.
“Was jetzt, mein Führer? Stunned but elated, Hitler leans back on the couch and begins considering all the wonderful opportunities now open to him.
rpjohnson: We’re in agreement on, what, 95% of everything. The Democrats have been complicit in all of the campaigns of the right, moving the Overton Window further and further from an actual centre. In that way, they enabled the Republicans’ vilification of Hilary.
But you have to be careful about saying things like “people who didn’t vote for Hilary don’t have souls” and, “Trump is inhuman.” Both are unfortunately human in very common ways.
The best way for Democrats to run is to run as real Democrats, not as wishy-washy pretend Republicans.
ray-in-dilbert: Black men had the “right” to vote — and for nearly 100 years it was rarely exercised; that comparison does not work.
At any rate, If I had been an American, I would have voted for Hilary. But as Michael Moore pointed out two weeks before the election, Trump would win, not because of his policies or his personalities, but because enough of the American electorate are filled with rage and hatred at a system which has failed them, that they will vote, not for any particular candidate, but just to say “fuck you!” Moore also said that they would quickly regret it.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that Wolff is not an especially reliable source. So take with at least a grain of salt.
I at one point thought Trump was possibly an agent of Hillary well placed to tank the election as there was no way he could win.
Then I read about this guy leading into the election:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/28/professor-whos-predicted-30-years-of-presidential-elections-correctly-is-doubling-down-on-a-trump-win/
Before all the candidates sifted out it seemed that the choices would be an unappealing choice between Hillary and Jeb. Clinton vs Bush redux. And let’s say that actually played out and Jeb won. President Jeb would be no doubt the bane of the Left and would have said and done stuff that resulted in ruffled feathers and much gnashing of teeth. In that alternative reality how could any of us know the frightening outcome where Jeb lost out to Trump instead of, for sake of speculative contrast, beating Hillary. What would a typical Jeb presidential post to Twitter consist of?
Greta Christina once announced a moderation policy where she would not accept even the slightest suggestion of sexism – like calling Clinton by her first name and Trump by his last.
rietplum (above): I agree with that. Eminently reasonable and equitable. I will try to address as Clinton or Ms. Clinton or H. Clinton from now on.
# 26 ahcuah
Clearly some of what Wolff is writing is a bit of embroidery to supply a bit of ‘realism’ to the story but the overall outline seems likely to be pretty accurate. There is just too much supporting
farcetheatrics and tweets to put the main outline in doubt.rietpluim:
Wasn’t “Hillary” how she was generally referred to by her own campaign, though? To make her seem more relatable and less…Clinton-y, or whatever? I mean, the campaign logo was an H, not a C. There’s even a version that says “Hillary for America” on it.
Yeah, I was just about to say that all of HRC’s campaign materials said “Hillary,” not “Clinton” or even “Hillary Clinton.”
@28-rietplum-
Then we get serious confusion with name recognition. There are three Clintons including Chelsea and numerous Bushes. Hence Hillary and Jeb are more recognizable as individuals. For Trump…Dumpster Fire may be more appropriate, but his last name is sufficient.
@KG #6:
Except Trump had already paid his doctor to say that he was in better health than anyone ever to be elected to the Presidency, even though Trump would be older upon election than every single one of the others had been.
#10, etc
Jesus Fucking Mythical Christ on a Sybian.
We get it.
You guys got played like a fiddle by Putin and his troll army and now the Sunk Cost Fallacy is a motherfucker. Fine.
You’re still gonna get a better result admitting your failure and seeking redemption than sesquicentupling down and blaming everything but yourselves for the predictable outcome of your petulance.
Oh, right, if you preening fuckwits were capable of recognizing that results matter we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I continue to be baffled by some Democrats’ complete failure of empathy regarding why many leftists stayed home rather than voting for Clinton.
“You’re going to shut up, you’re going to vote for her, and you’re going to pretend you like it, because your lack of enthusiasm is hurting our [insultingly bad] campaign [for this candidate you despise][and who everyone says will win anyway]” is not how you get people — people who are already despondent and angry because you fucked over a candidate they loved — to go out and vote. It’s how you create voter apathy and resentment.
You’ve given up on convincing them that Clinton is actually any good — fair enough, they’re unlikely to ever buy that. But if you’re going to manoeuvre them into a situation where they’re obliged to vote for your lesser evil, at least have the decency to be a bit apologetic about it.
Give them a path to compromise with their dignity intact. Give some indication that you appreciate their dilemma, that you’re interested in working out a better solution next time. Don’t alternately gloat and threaten them with moral condemnation. I don’t recall anyone here displaying any gratitude for those Sanders supporters who did grit their teeth and vote for your candidate.
Of course, losing the election in this fashion has the considerable face-saving advantage of already knowing exactly who to shift the blame to. And you get a justification for fucking them over again next election, traitors that they are.
Now there’s an image to not be easily unseen.
In case anyone took me to be advocating Jeb…no. I voted for HRC or however it is appropriate to refer to her in these parts. Geez. But Jeb would be preferable to The Donald as an impacted wisdom tooth to necrotizing fasciitis.
Before affable Barack taught us niceness, I always thought HRC a realpolitik head-chopping Machiavellian. Her relationship with Kissinger didn’t quite dissuade me from that. I actually liked her for that impression of her. She could as POTUS have been the bane of the Left instead, just much less so. And we still would have no idea the alternative we suffer now.
“Failure of empathy?”
Disgusting.
No kidding. I, and most other Sanders voters I know, did exactly that. I even tried to convince lefties to vote for HRC as the lesser evil. Fat lot of thanks I’ve been gotten for it; in fact, with the treatment I’ve gotten since then for ever daring to criticize HRC, like for her friendship with Kissinger (who got leftists thrown out of helicopters in Chile) I’ve just about grown to regret it. Not that I’d have voted for Trump.
And no, calling out centrists for a lack of empathy isn’t disgusting, it’s factual. Centrists Dems have proven perfectly willing to throw the Left under the bus, including inventing the slur “alt-left.” It’s a Catch 22 with them: they don’t need us, they say, during elections, and they don’t have to listen to us: but afterwards, how dare we not have fallen in line.
I’ve been literally dehumanized by staunch HRC supporters, like being called a “Russian bot” for daring to be a leftist.
IngisKahn: Well, what else would you call utterly failing to anticipate how other human beings will react to being treated a certain way? Even if you think Sanders supporters are universally awful idiots, empathising with them is still useful if you’re trying to get them to do what you want.
What’s that? Half of your family was deported? Well no one bothered to thank me!
WTF is this shit?
You’re right. We didn’t empathize with their lack of empathy.
Oh, get off it. I work with and financially support (piddlingly) orgs that actually work with undocumented immigrants.
Remember the deportee in chief? Remember how establishment Dems couldn’t get together to actually save DACA?
Nice non-sequitor and ad hominem, though.
*deporter in chief, that is. Damn autocorrect.
Not to mention that a lot of the leftists I know are PoC (including Latinx) and women and non-binary folks, but by all means, continue with the dehumanizing “Bernie Bros” nonsense.
I voted Bernie in primary. Affable Barack changed me. Too many first names?
IngisKahn:
Man, I’ll never get my head around partisan politics. One minute you’re demanding that people acquiesce to a power play they find deeply unethical because it’s the Lesser Evil and you just have to be Pragmatic sometimes, the next you’re pushing away obvious, easy allies like JP here in some sort of ill-conceived resentful purge. What could this possibly gain you?
I would be cautious about proclaiming this book – the people discussed, involved and quoted are an extremely dishonest crowd, the author has not the best reputation themselves.
How can it be trusted? Because it confirms what seems obvious about Trump and reinforces ones dislike?
Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y @ #35 — I don’t disagree that acknowledging the Putin connection is important, but I think it’s also important to realize that we got played by our own version of oligarchs, such as the Mercers, the Koch bros, Adelson, Murdoch, and others. I think the same can be said of the Brexit vote where the UK got played by some of the same bad actors, as well as some British one’s. To some extent Russia and Putin are distractions from the larger problem of how enormously wealthy people, regardless of their nationality, can hijack an election.
fentex,
No need to trust it as actually factual, but on a meta level… well, it is interesting how Trump has lashed out at Bannon thereby.
You come on a thread about the continuing horrors of Trump and you whine about people not being thanked for not helping him. It’s maddening.
If this were about politics I’d be pissed at Bernie alone. It’s his responsibility to rally his supporters, but it was clearly so much more than that.
JP:
Don’t see how that’s non-sequitur or ad-hominem, it’s the exact point. Trump presented a danger like we’ve never seen – exceedingly so for those less privileged. To make it about anything else is damaging.
[meta]
It’s also interesting how posts such as these tend towards the strange attractor of the Democratic nomination in the election held over a year ago. Recrimination galore! :|
I hate Trump and I voted for HRC in the general.
I wasn’t the one who started relitigating 2016 in this thread, but damn if I won’t respond to the constant and ever-present blaming of “Bernie Bros” (which is an absurd and dehumanizing phrase.)
I find it kinda horrifying that a conversation about the current shitshow the US is facing has once again wandered off into navel gazing over the election. I’m all for fire investigators eventually figuring out how a building burned down, but now is the time to focus on the big red trucks.
So to speak.
John Morales @ #49 — Indeed, “fake news” was not the first thing out of his mouth but that Bannon had lost his mind. Not that lack of denial is evidence of the veracity of the story but still, you would think denial would have been right up there. I’m sure they will get to the denials tomorrow.
@52-JP
I was incensed by this leak that disgusted me about DNC, being someone who voted for Bernie in primary:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/wikileaks-emails-democratic-officials-plotted-to-expose-bernie-sanders-as-an-atheist-a7151476.html
But I still rose above it and voted for HRC against the Orange Buttstain.
There are certain expectations, in a civilized society, that are so basic that meeting them does not in and off itself make one worthy of glowing praise.
I’m mystified that “Let-It-Bern-ers” hasn’t caught on, since it far more accurately encapsulates the damning element, but it’s intellectually and regular dishonest to insist that “Bernie Bros” is misgendering or dehumanizing.
We did.
Oh, and “the idea was floated by one person, rejected, and nothing came of it” isn’t “plotting” shit.
Uh, how in the hell is it “dishonest” in any way to point out that “Bernie bros” is misgendering or dehumanizing? Do you not realize the gender of “bro?”
I’m non-binary, AFAB, part Roma, disabled, and tbh I’m holding my freaking tongue right now.
The plot thickens. According to The Hill, one of Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, sent Bannon a C&D letter. Wonder if sent one to Katie Walsh who seems to have also talked to Wolff. In fact, it seems like a lot of people talked to Wolff. If Wolff’s story is valid, he pretty much had open access to the White House long before Bannon left. Interesting strategy, but I’m afraid that horse already left the barn.
Electing a king for a four year term is
stupid
.
you like it
live with it
“Bro” in this usage implies an attitude, not that the target is specifically male-identified. Much like calling someone a “motherfucker” isn’t a literal statement-of-fact accusation of that person having committed incest.
That said, given that it beats around the bush and is so easily misunderstood in this fashion, I broadly agree the term should be deprecated.
Yeah, see, I did Sanders in the primary and Clinton in the general, and the occasion that I do get thanked for that, I find it mildly insulting. And even more despairing, that it would apparently be necessary to thank me. I made my decision, the obvious, decent decision, because even I should be expected to be able to get over that low bar.
Besides that, Sanders stumped for Clinton; he put his hand on the Democratic platform; and he’d ignited a movement that could have legitimately played ball with the establishment Democrats and given us a position to increase our share and even take over, in the future, and in the nearer future exert influence on President HRC. Hell, if anything, the dark horse that was supposed to be laughed away laid a golden egg. We had gotten far more than I really expected.
Not that I’m interested in piddling over a few percentage points on the Left, though, when I’m staring at a 47% monster that voted for monstrosity. Like I said, the election was a loss on that point alone, even if Clinton had won.
For the record, though, I could do without the refrain from SOME Democrats pissing all over Sanders because he doesn’t do the Secret Club Handshake as if that’s more important than not getting run over by fucking Nazis.
I don’t necessarily expect thanks, but it would be a lot better than getting pissed on and misgendered and dehumanized.
I’m not even in the “Sanders club.” He wa the best that was on offer by far, that’s all. I’m a freaking Communist, FFS. And I still voted for Kissinger’s BFF, despite my disappointment and misgivings, because at least she wasn’t Trump.
Which is about all the establishment Democrats have going for them – they’re barely not Republicans.
Oh, please. That’s not what it means; “bro” to HRC cultists means, well, “bro,” not an “attitude.” And what is that attitude, anyway? The one that you purport exists. Sexism? If so, then it’s still a misnomer and a slur, considering how many “Bernie Bros” are women. And if they didn’t vote for HRC, and they did vote, then they mostly voted for Jill Stein, who is, uh, a woman.
Seriously, a #StillWithHer recently told a prominent Black socialist on Twitter to “shut up, boy.”
Maybe worry about the “attitude” of your own people first.
….are you seriously asserting that women can’t be sexist?
I read the excerpt and my first thought was “what the heck do we do now? I’ll go read the comments to see what other people I respect plan to do”.
Apparently the appropriate course of action is to bicker about the minutiae of how we got here.
Taking your word that it happened, that was wrong, and cringeworthy, yes. That doesn’t lend any support to your bizarre windmill-tilting over what “bro” is meant to convey.
As for “what attitude,” I would suggest something in the vein of “a belligerent, self-absorbed, ‘kinda-stupid,’ and resistant-to-learning (especially from experience) affected solidarity” as a good starting point.
Paul Cowan
You have been very helpful.
Bless your heart.
Can women be sexist? It’s possible, but I would certainly be wary of throwing accusations of sexism at everybody who dared not to vote for HRC. Especially if, uh, they’re women. In fact, the aspersions that women voted for Bernie just because “the boys did” or because their fathers or brothers or whoever did, rather than that they had legitimate criticisms of her as a candidate is sexist as hell.
And your definition of “bro,” besides not being what it means, is ridiculous and jejune.
Get your people to pick a candidate who doesn’t embrace Kissinger next time and I might cast my vote for the Dems.
“Bizarre windmill tilting” over the fact that “bro” means “bro?” Get a fucking mirror.
Nice job with the attempted gaslighting, though.
Just wait till 2020 when Clinton runs and loses again. What will the corporate democrats blame then…
Mike Pence will enjoy a nice 9 years as POTUS though. Not looking forward to it from up here in Canada though, the blowback hits us too.
I’m willing to buy that Rupert Murdoch referred to Trump as an idiot – after all the man has been busy attempting to rule at least two countries (Australia and the UK) by proxy through his various media properties for most of the past three decades, so no doubt he’s seen enough political fools, damn-fools and idiots to be able to proffer an expert opinion (after all, he owns about half the Liberal and National parties here in Australia outright – the rest have mortgaged their souls to Gina Reinhart). But be aware: Uncle Rupert is more than happy to rule your nation by proxy as well, so long as his newspapers keep doing well and his personal fortune isn’t threatened.
I can also (post-Brexit) believe very sincerely that the Trump organisation didn’t really think they were likely to win, and the actual win took them completely by surprise. After all, as per Brexit, we KNOW what this looks like when it happens, and there was a very strong similarity between the whole “oh gods we caught the car, now what?!?” expression of the “Leave” campaign in the UK, and the “oh gods we caught the car, now what?!?” expressions of the Trump organisation on November 10 2016.
PS: Folksen, do you want to stop it with the circular firing squad? (Seriously, as a left-winger myself – Australian left-wing, which means as far as US politics go I’m off over the gibbering horizon, while in Sweden or Denmark I’d probably be regarded as a centrist – this tendency of left-wing parties to immediately form an ideological inquisition at the first taste of defeat or difficulty is probably their most irritating characteristic. Yes, things went wrong. Let’s see about getting things sorted out early for the next election so everyone’s singing from the same hymn-sheet at the same time, hmm?)
@17, KG
Nah, see, that’s where the election gets “stolen” because of “voter fraud.” Trump really won, donchaknow, but those crooked politicos wouldn’t play fair. Spinning a loss is what he does.
Now, a health issue would be a personal failing (to him, obviously health problems are not failings, but he’s so concerned with his image and appearing to be vigorous and verile that he interprets them as such), and not one he could blame on Hillary Clinton. It’s obviously important to him, otherwise he wouldn’t have paid that doctor to write that ridiculous note about his doubleplusgood health.
IngisKahn, John Morales:
My post was a response to people like a_ray_in_dilbert_space and rietplium dredging up the issue again. Calling Sanders supporters “fucking whiners” and wishing hell on them. I didn’t introduce the topic, I was responding to others’ ongoing obsession with this perceived betrayal.
Azkyroth:
There’s that failure of empathy again. You essentially put these people in front of a political Trolley Problem: make themselves complicit in atrocity X to prevent putatively worse atrocity Y. Many did, some didn’t (somewhat understandably, I think, since everyone, including the Trump campaign, basically believed that atrocity X was going to happen either way).
Thanking your allies for supporting you is basic courtesy. But if there’s one thing Democrats are committed to, it’s taking the leftist vote for granted.
JP: “Can women be sexist? ”
Phyllis Schlafley. QED
Some of the most stalwart supporters of the patriarchy are women. They grow up being told that this is what little girls do and just hope they are eaten last.
A request from a distant observer. Do any US citizens see that one central problem, causing partially all this mess, is the need to reform their out of date constitution.?
If they do see why is nothing done?
Whether the orange menace expected to win or not, it is clear from day one that he never actually wanted to do the job of president. He wanted – and expected – the job of an absolute monarch.
That article is terrifying, but sadly not shocking.
______________
@Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y
That could very easily be with slight corrections used as a justification for using certain insults against men:
“*Kitty*” in this usage implies an attitude, not that the target is specifically female-identified. Much like calling someone a “motherfucker” isn’t a literal statement-of-fact accusation of that person having committed incest.
And if someone wrote that justification for using that * gendered insult, they would be rigthfully shredded to bits.
* – If I wrote teh real word, it would end in moderation. You know which word I mean.
As someone whose first language is by default strongly gendered I had trouble understanding what the objections to gendered insults on FtB are. My reasoning was exactly the one used above.
My understanding now is that it is also the gendered origin of the insult that matters, because it binds the insult with something that is perceived as being inherently bad characteristic of that gender thus perpetuating stereotypes. Like weakness, or agression etc. So “bro” might not be meant as misgendering, but it is a gendered insult.
If
after a year
of Trump
you still
need
to go on
about Hillary Clinton
then you
have a problem
nobody
can help you with.
@78
It’s really hard to change the constitution and the people in power have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
In the end here we all sit, stewing in this shared nightmare, impotent, angry, cursing, drinking too much, or if you’re one of the lucky ones, stoned every evening desperately looking for something to laugh about. I know what we’re all thinking: November can’t come soon enough. We’ll cut that fat bastard off at the knees. Do to him what the GOP did to Obama. Virginia was a ray of sunlight. Alabama was like a shot of speed. Now comes the long, spirit challenging, 11 month slog through god-knows-what hellscape. Will it be a grayscale limbo like the past year? Or will it be filled with seat-of-the pants terrors? Mueller fired? The Constitution shredded? Open resistance? Violence in the streets? Blue states refusing to obey the DoJ? War in Korea or Iran? I don’t know the answer. I just hope my heart and soul can take what’s coming.
Not long after Obama was elected some bozo released a tell all book much like this one that confirmed every bad thing the right wing claimed about him. The right ate it up and we called them fools for it.
Now we on the left have a book that confirms every bad thing we claim about Trump. I urge skepticism.
@ 18 Aqunio
This is an easy question.
Meyer is simply wrong and lying.
We see empirically that mutations often increase information, notably gene duplication followed by divergence.
Our current bread wheat is a recent invention, and is hexaploid, a huge increase in information and quite useful for people who like bread and donuts.
The other three questions are equally simple minded, off topic, and it is time for you to learn how to use Google.
Oh for fuck’s sake, “Bernie Bro” refers to a very blatantly misogynistic section of Sanders supporters, not every Sanders supporter. And yes, some of them voted for Jill Stein but Jill Stein had no hope in hell of winning.
Also, “where was our thanks for voting for the lesser of two evils”? For starters, you can’t keep calling Clinton “evil” or even just a “bad candidate” and then expect thanks from the people who genuinely like and respect her that you held your nose long enough to vote for her. “You liked and supported a horrible candidate, now where’s your gratitude for my vote?” This was not a woman who got where she did without people who actually wanted her to be president and aren’t fully aware of the decades of right-wing attacks on her.
aquinoflavio @18
I really doubt you’re a big fan or that your “struggles” are in good faith.
@Tabby Lavalamp:
Then maybe people should stop using it as a blanket insult for everyone who supported Sanders, like they’re doing in this thread?
“Is Clinton a good candidate/human being” and “should Sanders supporters vote for her” are entirely separate questions. Centrist Democrats told Sanders supporters “doesn’t matter that we fucked over your preferred candidate, doesn’t matter that we’ve repeatedly demonstrated that we neither want nor respect your views in this party, doesn’t matter that you think Clinton will do serious harm and we’ve failed to convince you otherwise — now that we’ve created a situation where your only other option is worse, you have a moral duty to vote for our candidate and we don’t need to make any concessions. So get to it, Bernie Bro.” It’s entirely reasonable to expect appreciation from an ally for doing the right thing in the face of that sort of humiliating bullshit. Or at least it would be advisable to show some gratitude if you want to keep your allies, even if you don’t actually feel grateful.
I know, that’s the baffling part! Better than Trump, lesser evil, that’s one thing. But I can’t get into the brain of an ostensible leftist who would actually want someone like Clinton as president on her own merits. That’s my failure of empathy, I suppose. With her history and policies she’d be a contentious right-wing candidate here in Germany!
@Giliell:
If you scroll up, you will find that people started ranting about Sanders supporters, not the other way around. You don’t get to insult and condemn people, then call them obsessive for defending themselves.
Also, just to virtue signal a little: I’m not American. This isn’t about justifying how I voted. I just find the way the Democrats have been treating people who should be their obvious allies to be arrogant, unethical and foolish.
@williamgeorge
Yeah, this is obvious fanfiction. Conversations that the writer wasn’t present for, written out in full dialogue? But hey, it gives you dopamine if you hate Trump, and a lot of people do so it will sell well.
Trump Bannon row: 11 explosive claims from new book
According to the BBC’s article, the book claims that Ivanka expressed interest in running for president herself some day. Given the clusterfuck that is her father’s administration, and her failure to moderate that administration, I think she will not receive a warm welcome if she makes the attempt.
Zeppelin
I cannot find that before Glueson’s obsessive Clinton ramblings.
So if it’s a matter of “which sibling started” then that question is answered.
Then you got Hairhead #15
And then a bunch of comments about Clinton.
I scrolled down to the 30s and Sanders wasn’t mentioned there.
In short, your narrative is false.
@Zeppelin
Again, that’s a two-way street. The left needs the center’s allyship as well, and constantly attacking Clinton while expecting supplication to Sanders and then demanding gratitude for those who at least tried to keep Donald from winning isn’t a good look.
I’m a leftist who preferred Clinton to Sanders because not only did she have a generally progressive platform, she would have been able to work better with the Democrats in congress (neither would have been able to work with Republicans).
But then, I’m also Canadian so I didn’t get a vote in the matter. I’m also a swing voter who’s willing to go back and forth between the Liberals and NDP because I don’t expect ideological purity (if I did, I’d never vote).
I’m also still utterly confused that Sanders supporters are furious that the DNC preferred a Democratic candidate over an independent. I see to this day people complaining that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) was shafted by “his own party”. No he wasn’t.
Reginald Selkirk @89: Ivanka uses “architect” as a verb. That alone should be enough to disqualify anyone. Then there’s everything else…
@Giliell: Oh, you’re right, actually. Markgisleson did bring up Clinton first. I misremembered, sorry.
I still don’t think you can fault JP for defending themselves once the circlejerk started a few posts later. Nor me for pointing out that it’s ethically dubious and tactically moronic. I agree that it was weird and inappropriate of markgisleson to dig up the issue again here, though.
That said: there would be way fewer markgislesons around if her supporters displayed any sort of insight into why leftists didn’t accept her, or at least pretended to understand out of basic diplomatic sense. Because right now “centrist” Democrats are repeating precisely the mistake they made with Clinton: They figure Trump is so awful, they can just focus on attacking him, scoop up some right-wing voters, and snub the left, who are too high-maintenance with their demands for ideological consistency. I mean, what are those guys going to do, vote for someone else? Hah.
And if they did see sense I wouldn’t have to keep harping on about it just because I can’t stand to see the Democrats throw away the American left’s best hope for the future. Everybody wins!
Charly: ‘So “bro” might not be meant as misgendering, but it is a gendered insult.’
Oh FFS, how many times did you have to type that crap before you didn’t dissolve in hysterical laughter half way through? The Bernie Bros were a contingent of his supporters–exclusively male in this case, hence the “bro”–who refused to vote for Clinton, mainly because of her sex. Again, given that women have had the vote for less than 100 years and were the last group in the family of man to get that vote, why would you consider sexism an implausible partial explanation?
Zeppelin,
I find it implausible that “leftists” main issue with Clinton was policy precisely because:
1)Her policies were virtually indistinguishable from those of Obama, and indeed were to the left of Obama on some issues
2)Obama was elected and re-elected convincingly
3)Obama’s popularity was over 50% at the time of the election.
Tabby Lavalamp: Do you at least acknowledge that Sanders was shafted, then? And that his supporters’ anger over this is legitimate?
If we can condemn Sanders supporters who didn’t vote Clinton for not foreseeing that Trump would win without their support (despite the common conviction that he had no chance) — can we not also blame centrist Democrats for failing to predict that Clinton would lose, and that taking a principled left-wing stand would be far more beneficial in this situation than a mealy-mouthed centrism that still ends up defeated?
In the end the left had to make all the concessions and the centrists made none. They got their centrist candidate, all her policies intact. Common decency (and diplomatic sense) suggest that you show some courtesy to the side who just had to make a huge, distasteful concession.
I’m not “demanding” gratitude, I’m advising it.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
I also despise Obama’s policies, though? He put a charming, urbane face on them, of course, but he’s still a war criminal, same as every US president of my lifetime.
I’d say the main difference is that Obama did a far better job conning leftists, whereas they saw through Clinton right away.
As a general proposition, I think the difference between the left and the right is that the left is stupid and the right is evil. Evil tends to be better at playing politics than stupid, which is why Republicans keep winning.
There are people on the right who are purists, who will not vote for any Republican that they don’t consider sufficiently conservative. But there don’t seem to be enough of them to actually throw an election to the Democrats in the same way that Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 and Ralph Nader supporters in 2000 gave us Trump and Bush. Maybe we should find out how the GOP manages to keep their extremists on the reservation.
Oh, and of course there wasn’t a Sanders around then. The left didn’t have a charismatic alternative, and the Dem establishment didn’t have a threatening left-wing competitor to sloppily fuck over, thereby alienating his supporters. It was a simpler time, basically.
thirdmill:
I’d put it another way. The right rally behind power, behind Strong Men, while the left rally behind principles (or at least symbols thereof). That’s why the left is naturally more fractious. The Democratic establishment tend to get jealous of the right and try to get their people to rally behind power as well, which naturally alienates the left.
Also, did you forget about the Tea Party? They were a great help getting Obama re-elected.
Also also, did you miss the part where a group of extremists took over the GOP? They grabbed the power, and so the “moderates” rallied behind them. They’re running the US now, they’re hardly “on the reservation”.
I don’t know that the tea party threw the election to Obama; I think Obama was going to get re-elected regardless. But maybe I’m wrong. Did the tea party have a candidate they backed over McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, or is there any evidence they didn’t vote Republican when the election actually rolled around?
And yes, the extremists have taken over the GOP for the second time — the first time was when the Christianists took over the GOP early in Reagan’s term. But the point is that the disgruntled Republicans mostly still voted Republican, unlike a lot of Sanders supporters who either stayed home or voted third party.
Zeppelin:
No, I do not acknowledge that. Even if the DNC managed to pull off some shenanigans in favour of the Democrat, the independent still failed to rouse enough support. His supporters keep failing to acknowledge that not enough Democratic voters wanted him as their candidate. Particularly black voters who saw him as caring more about white working class voters over their concerns.
@95
That’s absurd. Obama was just as much of a “hold my nose and vote” candidate as Hillary was, as far as I was concerned, and my own posting history on this blog during his presidency will indicate that I think of him as a borderline war criminal who happened to be president during some beneficial supreme court decisions, concurrently and in retrospect.
Now, I actually didn’t want to get drawn into this endless discussion because I do think it’s silly when there’s a fascist in the WH, but here we go.
Zeppelin
I know, it was always the others.
You know, that shit cuts both ways. Having the luxury of watching this from a few thousand km distance I can also see why many people who are not all evil “centrists” had and have their issues with Sanders.
He is demonstrably flippant when it comes to minority issues. A few weeks after the election he proudly campaigned with an anti-choice mayoral candidate and basically told women to shut up, there were more important issues than their bodily autonomy, that this was something that was negotiable.
He felt shafted, as you put it, by the closed primaries, but is happy with caucuses which exclude poor people, minorities, women and disabled people.
Black people didn’t feel like he was taking their concerns serious enough, instead going for the good old social democratic economic approach.
Just like there are all the good reasons to dislike Clinton, there are also good ones to dislike Sanders.
As for the “bad candidate, bad campaign” bullshit:
1. Actually everybody (apparently including the orange despot) expected her to win.
2. She won the popular vote by 2 million votes, but somehow an unfair system put into place by men 200 years ago is still a woman’s fault.
You don’t have to like Clinton in particular to spot that. I’m pretty sure I don’t like her.
Tabby Lavalamp:
“Pull off some shenanigans?” That’s putting it so mildly, under other circumstances I’d think you were making a cynical joke.
@#101, thirdmill
Oh, look, it’s a Clinton supporter lying. What a surprise. Exit polls consistently showed that 95% of Sanders supporters voted for Clinton, which is a greater percentage than Clinton supporters who supported Obama in 2008 (around 90%).
@#102, Tabby Lavalamp
Then you are just plain wrong. It’s no longer an issue, the Clintons and the DNC (whose bills she was paying) cheated. They’ve admitted it. The New York Election Board admitted flat-out that they kicked likely Sanders voters off the rolls in advance of the primaries, and the DNC’s lawyers admitted implicitly in court that the primaries were rigged. If you continue to pretend this was a fair primary election, you are just a liar, and an offensive one at that.
And Clinton supporters keep failing to acknowledge that winning the Democratic Party vote is not particularly helpful because Democrats are no longer even the largest group of registered voters. The selection of Clinton caused the Democratic Party to bleed voter registrations, but even in 2015 there were more registered Independents than Democrats. Saying “we should not run an Independent because of party affiliation” is stupidity, it’s a way to guarantee a loss.
Oh, really? You mean the black voters in the “firewall” states, who said in exit polls that they were voting based on pure name recognition? (75% to 85% of Clinton voters in the first three southern primaries, depending on the state) Or maybe you mean the ones who didn’t turn out for Clinton at the same rate they did for Obama, even though Trump was blatantly racist? That sure seems like a vote of confidence to me!
Frankly, Clinton supporters who whine about the lack of support from “the left” are pretty much in the same position as dictionary atheists who whine about “rifts” and “SJWs”. If your idea of an appropriate candidate for the Democratic Party is somebody who thought the TPP was a good idea, who has been in favor of essentially every war in her lifetime, who saw nothing wrong with accepting millions from the financial sector, who was in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry to the point of thinking that Keystone XL was a good thing (until Sanders made an issue of it), who said flat out that the banks needed no further regulation and that universal healthcare was never going to happen, who changed position at the drop of a hat on major issues which involved serious questions of ethics, who admitted that her first Supreme Court nominee, at least, was going to be right-of-center, and who was perfectly happy to have a personally anti-choice running mate who was in favor of abstinence-only education when he was a governor, then frankly: you shouldn’t be in the same party as “the left”. De facto, you agree with the positions of the Republican Party, even if you disagree with the justifications which they use for those positions. You are not really a Democrat, you’re a conservative who has gotten confused about party names. If “the left” is going to lose out whether your preferred candidate wins — as they would have if Clinton won — or not, why should you expect “the left” to support your candidate?
(Oh, and preemptively: fuck anybody who complains about this post because it is from me.)
What Giliell says at #80.
Can it stop now, please?
Giliell:
Well, yes, that has been my point — that centrist Democrats have been unjustifiably and unwisely contemptuous of Sanders supporters.
As to all those issues with Sanders: I agree, basically! He was far from perfect, and I don’t think he had any grasp of intersectionality, which is…kind of a big deal for an American leftist. Thing is, Clinton was worse on every single one of them.
Trump was an awful candidate with a farcically terrible campaign, and he still won. When I say “bad” here I’m making a value judgment, not a strategic one*. I think she’s a bad person. Her values and beliefs are bad. She would have been a bad** choice even if she’d won by a landslide, because they’d still have made a bad person president. No-one can tell me she was the only viable candidate, that there was no-one less odious who could have run against Trump.
I don’t (exclusively) blame Clinton for losing the election. I just don’t scapegoat leftists for it either.
*though she was certainly a strategically poor choice of candidate to lose an election with — losing while taking a firm leftist stand would have been much more advantageous
**Yes yes, less bad, but still bad on its own merits.
I’m basically on your side, Vicar, but I still find your Clinton obsession tedious and unhelpful. I’m sure I’m annoying plenty of people in this thread, but at least Hillary Clinton isn’t the only damn thing I ever talk about.
I guess I’ll take these…
Ask how they’re defining “information”. To my eye, any non-lethal mutation that creates a new sequence of DNA is an increase in information.
RNA transcription. This is a major area of study – maybe go to Wikipedia to get an overview, and then follow some of the related links and footnotes if you want to learn about it in more depth.
Homeobox genes. Again, go to Wikipedia for an overview.
There are several competing theories and it’s not clear which one of them is the “best”. Start at the Wikipedia article on “Abiogenesis”.
“I know it when I see it”.
Seriously, when you get down to the most basic level, there’s a grey area where you can’t really say if a thing is “alive” or not. The Wikipedia article on “life” lists some of the more common definitions.
I should say at this point that Wikipedia (or any other encyclopedia) is only good for getting a general overview of a topic, and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for research using primary sources.
Zeppelin: “I also despise Obama’s policies, though? He put a charming, urbane face on them, of course, but he’s still a war criminal, same as every US president of my lifetime.”
Really? I’m curious what you would have had him do. He inherited two wars and a ruined economy, along with an opposition party that was in the majority for most of his time in office and set as their primary objective preventing Obama from accomplishing anything.
Despite this, he kept the economy out of the ditch, wound down the active war in Iraq, tried to wind things down in Afghanistan, didn’t start any new wars, started dialogue on race, reformed the broken sentencing guidelines, pardoned a lot of folks who deserved pardons, got people to take climate change seriously, backed native people in their struggle against pipeline giants, etc.
What would you have had him do?
And did it ever occur to you that the fact that each President’s foreign policy looks pretty much the same by the second term might, just might mean that there isn’t as much freedom here as you imagine?
“Really? I’m curious what you would have had him do. ”
Not blowing up people with drones or bombing hospitals would have been a start.
@ a_ray_in_dilbert_space
Do not put words into my mouth. Do not argue against things I neither said, nor implied. I am perfectly capable of understanding and accepting the evidence that most of the opposition to Clinton was based on sexism and fueled by mysogyny. That was not the issue.
Read the debate to which I was responding, because you seem to have missed the bit where the use of “Bernie Bros” was defended as being OK to use as insult for people whose gender is unknown because women can also be sexist and the “Bro” part is now essentialy gender neutral and about “attitudes” etc.
So which is it? Is it used exclusively for sexist jerks who switched from Bernie to Trump regardless of their gender (in which case, why not just call them “sexist jerks” without using a gendered word at all) or is it used exclusively for sexist men who switched from Bernie to Trump? Choose whether you want to eat your cake or have it.
I really hate it when people on the same side of the issue are using contradictory arguments while thinking they support each other like you now do for Azkyroth. I also hate when people use argument X against things they do not like but get all indignant when the very same argument is used against things they do like. Like in this case use of an insult that has evidently gendered root.
When someone, regardles whether malicious asshole JAQing off or genuinely clueless person wanders in here and either asks about the “kitty” and “Richard” and other gendered insults and why they are not OK to use when they personally in their cultural/linguistic background do not perceive them as being inextricably gender-bound, they get piled on. Admittedly they get piled on with plenty of good arguments, so the genuinely clueless get a chance to get educated and change their mind, but there is also a lot of indiscriminate hostility.
You and some others now feel the need to defend the use of a new-mint clearly gendered insult using the same arguments that are in other necks of the internets used to defend arguments that dehumanize women with whom their inhabitants disagree with. Do you not see that by inventing and (especially indiscriminately) using the “Bernie Bro” as an insult you engage in the same tribalism and othering as people who use the insult “feminazi” and similar against women feminists? The mentality and process are the same even though I agree that you (generic) are (mostly) right and they (disproportionately mostly) wrong. It goes like this: 1) find the group you disagree with 2) find the gender that is prevalent in that group 3) make the gender a defining characteristic of that group and ignore the rest 4) invent gendered insult for that group 5) when called on it argue the insult is not gendered – or whatever other rationalization you like.
To be sure, this mentality has in culture an overwhelming bias against women, thus feminism is needed. That does warrant to try and eliminate that hostile bias, not to counterbalance it.
And this I learned on this very site, from commenters presenting convincing arguments against the use of gendered insults regardless whether they are perceived/used/can be argued as gender neutral and regardles which gender the potray/target. But sometimes some people are all “do as I say, not as I do” and that is plain disheartening to see.
P.S. I am not a US citizen and I did not have a real say in this matter. But if you bother to look into my commenting history you will find out that I warned that Trump is dangerous fascist who should be stopped for months prior to his win.
P.P.S Sorry for the essay. It kept growing because I was trying to avoid further mischaracterizations of my position. Yeah, a fascist has acces to nuclear arsenal. But, “this shit cuts both ways” applies fot this too, so I decided to post it anyway, although it is admittedly a minor issue.
Vicar, 106, calling people liars when there’s a disagreement as to how to interpret data isn’t really great for coalition building with an eye to the next election, but be that as it may: Yes, 95% of Sanders supporters voted for Clinton. The 5% who didn’t probably made a difference in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, which, had they gone the other way, would have given Clinton the election. So given that it changed the result, I would say that’s a lot. Feel free to disagree if it makes you feel better.
I know better than to get into this, but:
The one and only reason the DNC ‘allowed’ Sanders to run with them was to neutralize him as a candidate. If he had run as an independent, he almost certainly wouldn’t have won the election, but neither would Clinton. Nobody was more shocked than the DNC when Sanders actually gave them a serious fight for the party’s nomination, in spite of being a major disadvantage (he didn’t have near the name recognition Clinton did and does, and he’s a socialist), hence the further shenanigans. The DNC started with their thumbs on the scale; they ended the primary stomping on it.
This notion that the DNC had any remotely decent intentions behind bringing in Sanders is bullshit. It was always an attempt to bury him, once and for all.
Giliell,
And how exactly would you have had him avoid blowing up hospitals in a war theatre where communications and intelligence are almost comically bad. Any offensive capability depends on people. People fuck up. I won’t defend the fuck ups–particularly when they are as severe as the one you allude to, but people fuck up, so until you find a better system, we’ll have fuck ups.
The drone program predated Obama. He instituted more controls on it than were present before he came in and probably saved lives in the process. The only way to be sure of doing no harm is to do nothing. Harm still occurs, but you have the satisfaction. Ending or significantly curtailing the drone program was not an option if he wanted to get re-elected.
vucodlak, the DNC bet on what it thought was the winning horse. I’m enough of a political realist to not fault them for it.
The real question is: If Sanders had been the nominee, would Trump have still won. And that we don’t know. I can see arguments on both sides. Sanders wouldn’t have had a lot of Clinton’s baggage, but he also made lots of rookie mistakes during the primaries that could well have carried over into the general.
@116
By…not ordering the strikes that lead to horrific war crimes?
He’s the commander in chief of the fucking military, for fuck’s sake.
Vivec,
Did you read the report on that incident? It occurred due to faulty intelligence from an Afghan source, and Obama was not involved in the decision. Do you really think the CiC signs off on every single military action? You really should read up on the Presidency–it does not come with unlimited power.
@119
“Hey guys, stop shooting stuff at people. I literally outrank everyone who is potentially hearing this. If you don’t stop, enjoy your court martial.”
Not killing as many innocent people as possible does not count as saving lives. That’s like every abuser ever saying “but I didn’t break both your arms”.
As for doing something vs nothing: what’s the evidence it’s doing anything but breeding more terrorists?
Their lives were a sacrifice he was willing to make.
For re-election.
Especially in his second term.
Do you actually notice what vile shit that is?
Giliell: “Do you actually notice what vile shit that is?”
Yeah, it’s called politics.
The perfect doesn’t exist. You have better and you have worse. Obama made things better. He certainly is not above criticism, but the fact is that he persisted and made things better in the face of overwhelming resistance and odds. The problem with the Presidency is not that the President has too much power. It is that he has a very few powerful tools that he can wield. There is the power of the bully pulpit. There is the power of regulatory agencies, but this is quite circumscribed and mostly controlled by career civil servants. There is diplomacy through the State Department, Commerce, etc. Again, the President is limited in these regards. And there is the military, where the President has a (mostly) free hand. That is why the military gets the call so often. Of these tools, Obama was probably least effective with the military. He had the most reservations about military power of any President since Carter. It is easy to criticize what you do not understand.
Perfect example of how everything before the “but” is irrelevant.
Dude, you don’t get to say that after you justified and excused the murder of a few hundred children.
@ thirdmill, #117
There was no pragmatic “realism” in the Clinton Campaign, outside of a few parts of her platform that you’d only know about if you read them on her website. They called it pragmatism, but it was the empty dogma of centrism the campaign was selling. The proof of this? In the face of the biggest anti-establishment backlash since the 1960s, Clinton ran on the premise that she was the most establishment candidate ever.
Witness her long history as a political insider! See her many connections to people who are the enemies of all that is good and decent (like Kissinger, as previously mentioned)! Marvel as she tells appalling lies (did you know the Reagans were at the forefront of the AIDS awareness movement?) to polish the reputation of people who were the enemies of anyone even slightly left of the center-right! Watch as she defends egregious abuses of power by the intelligence community, and vows to continue the war on whistle-blowers!
There was nothing pragmatic about any of that, nothing about it that even made sense in the 2016 political climate, but it was the gospel of Third-Way Democrats. It was smart to tout her experience in the face of Donald Trump’s empty showmanship, but that’s not what the Clinton campaign did. The campaign’s message was “You WILL accept centrism, because (in spite of the mountains of evidence to the contrary) the US is really a center-right nation, or you can all go to hell.” It backfired spectacularly, and we’re all paying the price for it.
@ a_ray_in_dilbert_space, #122
Yet another chorus in that hoary old tune “Don’t Make the Perfect the Enemy of the Good.”
The song would be perfectly fine, had ‘good’ ever actually been in the running. Obama, Clinton, and their supporters in congress are all members of the “it could be much worse” club. They’re proud of this fact, mistaking their refusal to indulge in some of the worst vices of power, and thus sink into total depravity, for a virtue.
Oh, so they finally decided to give LGBT individuals some equal rights once the courts, the electorate, and public opinion forced their hands, rather than fighting it tooth and nail to a bloody end like the Republicans would have done? Well, that’s… pretty much bargain basement human decency, but I suppose they do deserve some credit for not being cartoonishly evil about it.
Oh, so they didn’t blow up quite as many innocent people as they might have? Though they didn’t make any special effort to avoid killing civilians; they just didn’t go out of their way to target them like their predecessors did. Well, that’s… pretty fucking awful. Evil born of indifference isn’t actually an improvement over evil born of malice.
Oh, so they wagged their fingers sternly at our intelligence agencies, then did absolutely everything in their power to make sure they weren’t reigned in in any way? Well, that’s… terrible. Don’t give me any of that transparent ‘they need all this unchecked power to keep us safe’ bullshit. That unchecked power is now in the hands of some of the worst people on the planet, and the Dems handed it to them on a silver platter. One of the few things that gives me hope about the current administration is the fact that Trump is too stupid to stop insulting the FBI and NSA and use them.
The people who don’t care for Obama or Clinton because of the terrible things they and their allies have done are not “the perfect” playing enemy to “the good.” They are just people pointing out that even the “lesser evil” is appallingly evil. As Giliell and Vivec have pointed out, these people are responsible for war crimes. Things will NEVER truly get better in this world if we keep letting ‘little’ things like the mass murder of innocent people slide.
Giliell, Vivec and vucodlak, there is much not to love about Hillary Clinton. As a Democrat, I absolutely hated that she was my party’s nominee.
That said, if she were president, we would not be wondering if there’s going to be a nuclear war in Korea. Millions of Americans would not be faced with losing their health insurance, and we might even have a shot at single payer. There would not have been a trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, with social service cuts and a recession likely to follow. We would not have an administration that dog-whistles racists when it doesn’t court them outright. We would not be wondering if there’s a Putin mole in the White House. We would not have a newly appointed Supreme Court justice who believes that freedom of religion trumps everything. We would not wonder if abortion rights will still exist in this country. And the list goes on and on.
In politics, as in life, you frequently have to take what you can get. If and when you acquire magical powers, you can then install the president and Congress of your liking, but until then, the cost of not supporting Clinton in the general is that we now have Trump. So grow up already. We live in the world we live in, and not in the world you’d like to live in.
This strikes me as defeatist and condescending. The left doesn’t need to wait and hope for “magical powers” to imagine a better world and work for it, and most leftists I know are extremely politically active every day, including grassroots work, protests, community organizing, union organizing, and on and on. They do a lot more than show up to the polls every couple years.
Telling these kinds of people to grow up, shut up, and take what they can get is rude and insulting. One of my leftie friends, Sara, is an activist of the sort described above, and she after voting for Obama in 2012 and some of the things he did afterward (see above), she just couldn’t bring herself to vote for Clinton. She did vote in all local races and cast a vote for Stein. I’m certainly not going to push a friend and comrade of her caliber out of my life over her stance.
Yes, I view voting as a pragmatic act – Trump was a worst case scenario, and if nothing else, it’s going to be a lot harder to organize on the left with (even more) hostile forces in power – but other people have other ethical considerations, and they’re damn well as “grown up” as I am.
@125
The fuck are you smoking? I complain about trump all the fucking time. I criticize Vicar for his Clinton hobby horse all the fucking time. I literally just mentioned the other day my annoyance with being accused of receiving Soros money for going to so many anti-Trump ralleys. Kindly take your bullshit assertions and fuck off.
@126
Yeah, no shit she’s better than Trump, that’s why I voted for her.
Doesn’t mean I have to think she’s objectively a good candidate. “Better than Trump” is such a low bar that it describes like 50% of his own party, for fuck’s sake.
Zeppelin
I don’t believe you actually read her policy documents. I did – there were reams of them. She would fit reasonably neatly into the leftish side of Australia’s Labor Party – though the work of fixing the health system has already been done here.
As for her history, there are resources that tell you how she voted as a senator. More “liberal” (we’re talking Americans here) than Obama, and only Sanders and a couple of others more liberal than her. Her worst vote was, of course, for going into Iraq – and unlike practically everybody else who did so, she’s openly admitted that she was wrong.
As for things to read, anyone who can’t face the Fire and Fury exerpts can get a bit of light relief from the Washington Post. A considered response to Trump’s critics: Your momma
@ thirdmill, #126
I voted for Clinton in the general. I voted for Democrats across the board. I urged everybody I knew who might, possibly, have been on the fence to do the same. I didn’t discuss my misgivings with people who might have been swayed- I only talked about them in places like this, where (most) people knew what was at stake and would do the right thing. This is one of the reasons I hate engaging in these discussions; it gets old having to say that every time.
Another reason I hate doing this is that election is over. It was over more than a year ago. But since it’s over, there’s no reason to pretend that Clinton or Obama, Joe Biden or Tim Kaine, or whatever center-right asshole the DNC tries to foist on us next time, are acceptable to me. In fact, if I pretend that these people and their horrible records on a whole host of important issues are hunky-dory, it only guarantees that we’ll end up with the same bunch of fools next time around.
That last is why I hold my nose and plunge into these discussions occasionally- I do not want a repeat of the 2016 debacle, assuming elections are something we’ll have to worry about in the future.
Yes, Clinton would have been better than Trump in every conceivable way. That’s why I supported her despite my problems with her. Doesn’t mean I find the flaws I mentioned remotely acceptable. When it comes to things like torture, the mass murder of civilians, and flagrant abuses of government powers I’m quite inflexible. I will never say “a little torture is ok,” and I will never accept the murder of children and other non-combatants as “the price for safety” or whatever euphemism the Dems want to slap on it. If saving those people means risking the terrorists getting away, then that’s a risk we’ll just have to take.
Nerd
This would be kind of funny, if your comment didn’t come 100something comments into a thread that started out on Trump and got derailed by people’s neeeeeeeed to go over Clinton. Again.
Btw, Trump is trying to actually ban the book, but sure, Clinton.
At this rate, I fully expect people to still be arguing over Clinton’s 2016 campaign in the atomic wastelands of 2116, after 100 years of uninterrupted Republican rule, under the reign of Emperor Donald Trump VI…
Dunc
Could be the founding myth of a new religion.
As amusing as it is to once again have the various arguments about Clinton vs. Sanders and the adjacent lesser evil vote argument the whole discussion that we can read the election results as a condemnation of neoliberalism. (See #10) We actually can’t. Because we can be relatively certain that well over 75% of voters can not correctly define neoliberalism or more to the point provide a cogent argument against it. Clinton’s voice (and the related sexism) had more to do by far with her loss than any principled objection to neoliberalism by voters. It’s amazing to me how little the fact the average voter is a moron still escapes people especially post- Trump. It’s so besides the point to discuss policy when Trump fucking won. Policy doesn’t matter to elections and you’re fooling yourself if you think it does.
Also, ‘bro’ is clearly gendered as it implies (sexual) aggressive, reckless but naive behavior you see in stereotypical frat boys and Jersey Shore.
Also, Obama is likely a war criminal and if you haven’t heard the left complain about that I’m not sure who you have been listening too. To start to correct this Obama should have prosecuted Bush era officials* for torture and/or turned them over to international court to do the same.
*I think there was a handful of extremely low level cases pursued and then eventually dropped. I mean like officials who wrote the torture memo in AG office among others.
Mike Smith@134
So true. There’s even a guy here in Canada that did a dissertation on this exact topic, and proved that indeed, policy doesn’t matter.
To those who think Clinton is a liberal WTF???!!!? The only thing on which she is a liberal is race and gender politics. On the topics of economic reform (financial regulation, worker rights, single payer health care), environmental protection, and military interventionism she was fully conservative. So she is 1/4 liberal, 3/4 republican…. I’d call that more right wing than centrist.
To answer the question “why are people still discussing this?” : Because people need to keep the discussion alive for the sake of the democratic party who would like to forget this whole thing happened and not fix the serious problems that led them to think 1) that they could pick the establishment candidate they liked and to hell with the electorate, 2) that they could ignore 3 of 4 planks of a progressive platform and expect to have the vote of progressive voters.
So what? He could just pay him (or some other stooge) to say they had discovered a previously undiscovered heart abnormality or whatever. We know neither Trump nor his admirers are bothered by inconsistency in his lies.
Matrim@75,
And you think it’s beyond Trump to “discover”, subsequent to dropping out, that he didn’t have a heart abnormality after all, and hint (or outright claim) that the misdiagnosis was a Clinton plot to force him out?
Well, apart from the things others have already mentioned:
Kept in being,, and made use of, the popular movement that swept him into office in the first place.
Take the golden opportunity to break the oligopoly power of the big banks – who absolutely needed to be rescued from their own greed and folly by the federal government.
Realised from the start that playing nice with the Republicans was not going to pay any dividends.
Closed Guantanamo, as he promised. (And don’t tell me he couldn’t have done that. If there were genuinely serious obstacles that the power of the President could not overcome, he shouldn’t have made the promise.)
Refused to take part in or support the disastrous intervention in Libya.
That’s off the top of my head. Why didn’t he do these things? Because he is, in fact, an establishment politician of the centre-right. This was pretty obvious before he was elected, so my disappointment was only over the most obvious betrayals, such as Guantanamo.
(Oh, and preemptively: fuck anybody who complains about this post because it is from me.) – The Vicar@106
Please come down off that cross, Vicar – someone could use the wood.