a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

via the table is the table:

https://askaboutfukushimanow.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/lucy-charlie-brown-voting.jpg

things do really change, just maybe not in the ways people expect (or want)

yes, like Obama expanding surveillance beyond Cheneyesque boundaries

Gays can get married, women can file suit for unsafe working conditions, Wall Street firms feel a bit more insecure, and Florida will disappear under rising sea water. Not a bad six years.

yes Obama and Dubya are exactly alike, glad we settled that morbz

Brother Sanders

i'm just so, so, so happily smug that i don't vote.

― for reasons of sass (the table is the table), Saturday, September 1, 2012 6:18 AM (2 years ago)

get stufft shakes

(bcz, as on surveillance, Obama's worse)

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here Doc - do you think Sanders *is* going to appeal outside of that sphere? To latinos? Non-college educated whites?

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 3:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! That is exactly what I think. Not appeal massively, not appeal across-the-board, not appeal like "win a nomination" appeal. But sure, appeal. The tea leaf I'll choose to selectively read here would be that nurse's union endorsement. Old give-em-hell barnstorming for The Workers still has natural constituencies, even if they are not election-winning ones. Many of these constituencies are uphill battles for sure. I dunno, I just think that, for example with black voters, it'd be more reasonable (plus more interesting, ILX-wise) to watch Sanders spend the next 4-6 months pitching his spiel and see if he actually strikes a chord or if people go "yeah whatever thanks for trying, Well-Meaning But Clueless White Grandpa," than to just assume in advance that the latter is the only possible scenario.

uh, frank luntz's legs are shaking.

Luntz conducted a focus group of 29 people from Washington, D.C. and its suburbs that either like or adore the GOP front-runner, paying each participant for the more than two-hour session Monday night, the magazine reported.

“I used to sleep on my front porch with the door wide open, and now everyone has deadbolts,” one man said during the session, according to TIME. “I believe the best days of the country are behind us.”

“I’m frustrated beyond belief. I feel like I’ve been lied to,” a woman said. “Nothing’s getting better.”

“We know his goal is to make America great again,” another woman said. “It’s on his hat. And we see it every time it’s on TV. Everything that he’s doing, there’s no doubt why he’s doing it: it’s to make America great again.”

After the group watched recordings of Trump's political flip flops and remarks on women, the individuals reportedly said they liked Trump even more.

“You guys understand how significant this is?” Luntz asked reporters, according to TIME. “This is real. I’m having trouble processing it. Like, my legs are shaking.”

“I want to put the Republican leadership behind this mirror and let them see. They need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them,” Luntz continued. “Donald Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn’t listening to their grassroots.”

30 years ago a child would kick a deadbolt on the front porch with the door wide open.

idk do sideshow acts "graduate" to the big tent?

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 3:21 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

basically Sanders is currently Mr. Lifto and we need to change him into Perry Farrell

Donald Trump: The Wrath of God

“We know his goal is to make America great again,” another woman said. “It’s on his hat.

America, ladies and gentlemen

this whole thing is very:

http://fox-actors.blogspot.com/2011/08/fuck-hats.html

Focus group of 29 people.

former kos pundit "billmon" tries to diagnose the current moment

idk it's a little heady (and twitter's threading is awful now) but interesting

Billmon ‏@billmon1 57m57 minutes ago

14) Globalized, cosmopolitian plutocratic elite increasingly sees white US or European workers as just pale-skinned proles. Nothing special.

15) And so wage premium for white labor -- the price of subaltern imperialism -- is melting away. Immigration or outsourcing: result is same

16) Meanwhile, cultural values increasingly shared by globalized elites (or at least European & American branches) are feared/loathed...

17) ...by traditionalists in almost every culture, although not always for the same reasons.

18) Since swath of US is mentally still living in 17th century (having essentially missed the Enlightenment) cultural friction is high here.

er forgot the link to the whole thing

https://twitter.com/billmon1/status/636261804780486660

You can plug those quotes into a Reagan focus group in 1980, a W focus group in 2004.

i dunno this trump thing...it's got a weird energy that reminds me of jesse ventura

LOL amazing. The ruling elites are starting to look down on the lower class you say?

When "billmon" wrote that was just after 4:20pm so keep that in consideration.

it's def of a piece with recent analyses (if i can find them again) that the existence of soviet communism was worth x amount of redistribution in the form of social democratic welfarism in noncommunist countries. now that the evil empire is gone the new set of financial/tech elites are eager to strip it all back

one of billmon's other hobbyhorses is a return of 19th century style politics; a lot of this trump shit and the various strains of rejected conservatism that support him does feel really pre-ww2 to me as a phenomenon

Know Nothing Party

for sure

it's def of a piece with recent analyses (if i can find them again) that the existence of soviet communism was worth x amount of redistribution in the form of social democratic welfarism in noncommunist countries. now that the evil empire is gone the new set of financial/tech elites are eager to strip it all back

Together with learning to what degree the CIA funneled movie into the arts, I'm beginning to pine for the Brezhnev days.

"We know his goal is to make America great again," a woman said. "It's on his hat."

one of billmon's other hobbyhorses is a return of 19th century style politics; a lot of this trump shit and the various strains of rejected conservatism that support him does feel really pre-ww2 to me as a phenomenon

― goole, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 9:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Im kind of in this camp.. the world wars and the massive shift of wealth from the british empire to the US took the US into the most prosperous century ever seen and created a sense of a 'new normal' that might prove to be the exception rather than the rule.

man, imagine if he changes hats, that woman's mind is going to be BLOWN

xp

in other news, JEB! does women's health issues!

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/jeb-bush-planned-parenthood-criticism-121721.html#ixzz3jqpNyu2o

“I, for one, don’t think Planned Parenthood ought to get a penny though, and that’s the difference because they’re not actually doing women’s health issues,”

what are they doing

oh right -- selling baby parts like radiator hoses

doing dirt

maybe the hokey pokey

http://videogamewriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/MarioCap-Wings.png

that woman's mind is going to be BLOWN

feel like this is a comedy sketch that writes itself, the woman whose life is guided entirely by things she reads on hats

hehe

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/251836-trump-quotes-bushs-mother-in-attack-video

lol

man they really hate each other

hey I like Bernie, I agree w him about a lot of stuff (not everything). But no, I don't think he will win, and this is all essentially a sideshow. On the other hand even if he could win I honestly don't think he would be that good a president. Despite his ideological positions, he doesn't seem particularly suited to leading a party (much less a country), being good in a crisis, wrangling legislation through congress, navigating foreign policy etc. He's fine, even valuable, in the Senate. I don't see him being a successful president.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 4:13 PM (4 hours ago)

yeah the leading the party thing would be awkward considering he's been at odds with them so often, but then again i sort of doubt the GOP could be any more hostile to him than they've been to obama. and man, i have so much respect for you but it bums me out to hear you more or less buy into the "presidential" BS like this, like you'd rather have hilary's "experience" when it comes to foreign policy -- the woman who voted for iraq and has been a hawk her entire political career -- over bernie's? i mean the guy's been a US senator for a long time, i'm pretty sure he's got a good grasp of foreign policy

i genuinely can't tell with all the gabbneb wannabes we have around here but like, i assume the vast majority of us would, on the issues, prefer a bernie presidency to a hilary one? like when shakey says he "doesn't support" a bernie candidacy he means he thinks it's futile and it's not worth his ten bucks?

― usic ally (k3vin k.), Tuesday, August 25, 2015 1:09 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nothing particularly makes me feel like I should be fired up over anyone in particular being the president. A Republican will not be president, so it'll be some adequate Democrat. Hilary Clinton is adequate. Bernie Sanders would likely also be adequate. It really doesn't matter which Democrat.

Basically my entire adolescent and adult life so far has been in "endless war" mode so I assume all presidential administrations will perpetuate endless war by its own logic and it will not affect my life directly.

hey I like Bernie, I agree w him about a lot of stuff (not everything). But no, I don't think he will win, and this is all essentially a sideshow. On the other hand even if he could win I honestly don't think he would be that good a president. Despite his ideological positions, he doesn't seem particularly suited to leading a party (much less a country), being good in a crisis, wrangling legislation through congress, navigating foreign policy etc. He's fine, even valuable, in the Senate. I don't see him being a successful president.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 4:13 PM (4 hours ago)

I understand having some doubt about these things, but he's not exactly Nader.

I guess that's why we have debates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/25/first-trump-booted-univision-anchor-jorge-ramos-out-of-his-news-conference-then-things-got-interesting/?tid=sm_fb

"Go back to Univision."

An MSNBC commentator correctly called Jorge Ramos a combo of Anderson Cooper and Walter Cronkite in the non-Cuban Hispanic community.

this guy is beginning to get frightening now

For the umpteenth time, i do not support hillary.

Xp

I cracked up when the chyron popped up mere seconds after Trump talked about having thousands of Hispanics under his employ - "TRUMP: HISPANICS LOVE ME".
This is Daily Show/SNL fodder but real; an amazing new reality.
I'm almost hoping the country votes him in and we all burn at this point