Hillary Has Had Enough

Emilander said:

I'm sorry, but your characterization of the right is exactly why Trump won. While it may be true in some cases, telling half the country that they're too stupid or racist or sexist to see what's best for them alienates people and pisses them off. Then they get a "who the fuck are you to tell me what's best for me and mine" attitude. Unfortunately, despite Hillary's claims otherwise, Democrats have a hand in the current Us vs. Them mentality in US politics. Until there's room for nuance in political discourse, nothing's going to change.

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zerosystem said:

That's the issue I have with the 'Trump voters are all good people' narrative.

They're good people, but they support a man who says racist things. They're good people, but they support a man who cheats on his wives constantly, despite the fact that they criticized Bill Clinton for the exact same thing. They're good people, but they support a man who lies all the time.

And they should be criticized for the decisions they make. When Donald Trump said that a Mexican can't be trusted to judge a case because he is a Mexican, should everyone have bowed their heads and remained silent so as to not offend Trump supporters? Shouldn't PoC and women be defended when maligned publically?

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Introversion said:

I forgive any Trump voter who says, “I was wrong to vote for him. If I could do it over, I’d vote differently.” Bonus points for voting for Democrats in 2020.

What I can’t, won’t ever forgive are Trump voters who still, after all we now know, support him and his administration’s actions. Don’t want me to call you stupid? Don’t vote stupidly in the future. Don’t want me to call you racist? Stop voting for racists. (Don’t think Trump is racist? Sorry, you’re obviously stupid and/or racist.) Etc.

There is no rational defense for supporting what Trump is and does. Nazis are not fine people — we fought a war over this, and Nazis lost. Opening for-profit concentration camps for kids separated from their parents is evil. Rolling back environmental regulations is idiotic. Undoing the ACA is awful — as mediocre as it is (thanks to Republican opposition) it’s better than what it replaced. Evangelicals supporting the living personification of The Seven Deadly Sins is the height of gross hypocrisy — all in the interest of forcing their religious beliefs on me.

The people who support Trump don’t need to be destroyed, but the ignorance and fake news that makes them think government should be run “like a business”, and “trickle-down works”, does.

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Here's when it's a blessing to be Black in America. I feel for anyone who has to deal with a spouse, sibling, or relative that makes family gatherings miserable because at some point in the festivities they can't resist "owning the libs" and they start crowing about how with Trump in charge the economy is humming along, America is standing tall against the Chinese and those snooty Europeans, the media is reeling, and the swamp is finally being drained as the elites scream in frustration.

Yeah, it's a good time to own the libs, but here's the thing: it's the conservatives which own Trump and every foul, disgusting, vicious, thuggish, crude and straight-up gangsta shit he does over and over and over again. Trump says he's making America great again, but to hear Stormy Daniels tell him, he's not so great between the sheets and who's surprised by that?

I don't know anyone among my family and friends who voted for Trump. I mean, I'm sure somebody I know did, but I just don't know that. I don't hang with Omarosa, Kanye West or Stacey Dash so when Trump's name comes up at a dinner or a picnic or just a hang, it's usually because someone's calling him a dirty-so-and so. Nobody defends His Orangeness and what is said about him can't be repeated in polite company.

Black folks were already hip to Trump's shit. We already knew about his discriminatory housing practices, and his vicious vendetta against The Central Park Five, and all the sketchy stuff he's said about us ("I have a great relationship with the Blacks.")

Mostly though we saw how Trump hated on Barack Obama and tried to discredit, defame and deny his legitimacy as president. I knew there would never be a scenario that would arise where I would ever vote or accept Trump as the president. Which is why anybody squirts a few crocodile tears about civility and respect, I tell them to clean up your backyard before you lecture me about mine. Your president never respected my president so don't dare cry because you're only getting back what you put out.

When someone says bashing Trump voters only angers them and makes them redouble their support for him, my answer is "So what?" There's no need to bite your tongue around a Trump voter. We knew what they were getting and they did too. They just didn't care. They wanted what Trump offered them: hatred of the foreigner and hatred of the Blacks and the Mexicans and Muslims and the lesbians and the women who don't like being grabbed by their private parts and the dirt poor and the uninsured and the vets and the outsiders and the others who aren't real Americans rocking a MAGA hat.

Trump voters don't have to apologize or explain or repent for their vote. Maybe it was attacking the Gold Star family or Charlottesville or groveling before Putin that turned off some lifelong Republicans with deep pockets, but it turned on even more.

Don't look for mea culpas or acts of contrition from the Trump base. They're happy. They're thrilled. They didn't make a mistake. Quite the contrary. What's we see is exactly what they hoped to get. All the evil Trump does comes with the ticket. Own it.

“Every Trump voter is certainly not a white supremacist, just as every white person in the Jim Crow South was not a white supremacist. But every Trump voter felt it was acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one.”


Ta-Neshi Coates, We Were Eight Years In Power

quicklime said:

Hillary needs to crawl into a fucking hole and go away. And I say that as a guy who voted for her, and would again, in a heartbeat.

So why do I say that? She was a shitty candidate. Excellent potential president, but shitty candidate--she didn't break any laws but was WAY too fucking comfortable skirting them, and it only contributed to her image problem. People didn't like her. They didn't feel like she was honest, they felt she was whatever, an "ice queen," etc......like I said, I think she would have been a good (not great, but fuck, orders of magnitude better than our orange Cheeto-jesus) President, but as it stands.....she's inverse Donald Trump; she does more to animate the opposition, by far, than to animate her base.

Is that fair? Is it fair to say "and so she should shut the fuck up?" No, it isn't. She deserved better. At the same time, she also should have TRIED to BE better....she was remarkably comfortable, as I said, not breaking the law, but skirting the margins in a manner that looked greasy as fuck and made her an easy foil. So even though I agree with 100% of what she might say, I feel she does us no favors.

The tide is firmly at Donald's back. And the only thing that would make that better for me is if he was wearing a fucking cinderblock necklace. But I don't particularly want to see Hillary make his job any easier just by being Hillary.....

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So putting TS/SCI info on a private server was not illegal?
Approving Russia's buying 20% of USA's uranium way below market and then getting a huge donation to her foundation was okay?
Deleting her emails and destroying her hard disks and cell phones to prevent their being subpoenaed is legal ?

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

editor17 said:

So putting TS/SCI info on a private server was not illegal?
Approving Russia's buying 20% of USA's uranium way below market and then getting a huge donation to her foundation was okay?
Deleting her emails and destroying her hard disks and cell phones to prevent their being subpoenaed is legal ?

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

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All of that was covered by mainstream media. I find it horrifying that these topics continue to come up while not even a mention of the overwhelming problems with Trump are brought up in comparison. I get that Trump is harder to address. Where do we even start with security concerns and demonstrations of unprofessional behavior? How can we talk about Trump-Russia without hauling out gigantic relationship maps and financial charts? And policies? Whoooo.

Clinton wasn't perfect, so of course Trump had a chance! That kind of reasoning is sickening, especially after 18 months of confirmation that Trump is as bad as many Americans and international audiences feared.

editor17 said:

So putting TS/SCI info on a private server was not illegal?
Approving Russia's buying 20% of USA's uranium way below market and then getting a huge donation to her foundation was okay?
Deleting her emails and destroying her hard disks and cell phones to prevent their being subpoenaed is legal ?

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

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I almost answered you in good faith. Then I saw the 'lame stream' diss, and the lack of sources backing up your claims. No thanks.

editor17 said:

So putting TS/SCI info on a private server was not illegal?
Approving Russia's buying 20% of USA's uranium way below market and then getting a huge donation to her foundation was okay?
Deleting her emails and destroying her hard disks and cell phones to prevent their being subpoenaed is legal ?

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

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Hmm. Do you do any of your own research? It's always helpful to look at various news sources, not just the ones that confirm your biases. Also calling news sources "lame stream" is well, lame, and indicates that you have no interest in confirming the validity of your statements regarding H.R. Clinton. This might be fine if you are stating these things in an arena where there are similar low information debaters, but there are some extremely well informed posters on this site and this will not fly.

editor17 said:

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

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Several others have pointed out the obvious "message" you convey simply by using the tired right-wing trope "lame stream", so I won't go there.

But try this on for size: At this point, I really don't care much about what Hillary Clinton did or did not do. She isn't President of the United States, and never will be. And, most important, NOTHING she did ir did not do has any connection with what President Bone Spurs has or has not done, nor does it connect with the multitude of indictments and convictions and confessions of guilt that have permeated the cabal of corruption in the populace of people with whom Bone Spurs has surrounded and enmeshed himself. Nor does it have any connection with his daily litany of obvious lies and self-contradictions. Somebody wants to investigate Hillary Clinton? Fine. Let it happen. It has nothing to do with the pathetic pathological lying racist pig who currently pollutes the Oval Office in the White House (when he's not off at one of his golf resorts).

So let us all hear your defense of that particular vermin.

caw

so....how's this workin out for you Editor?


Palin-esque wordsmithing notwithstanding (ooooh, LAMEstream media--I see what you did there....what happens if you mix the words liberal and retarded? *waits with bated breath) you clearly have some heavy biases. What you don't appear to have is a terribly thorough understanding of actual laws, or Hillary's actual, rather than imagined, roles and responsibilities. Feel free to check out Corny's link, if you can be troubled to do so....

editor17 said:

It is not FOX making up stuff about Hillary but the lame stream press not reporting the shady and illegal things she did because they wanted her to win.

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If you'd have watched even one minute of mainstream media, you would know unequivocally this was never true. They news-yelled about the servers relentlessly. If you aren't going to back your side from an informed position, you ain't doing them much good.

The increasing radicalism and irresponsibility of the Republican Party, including decades of demeaning government, demonizing Democrats, and debasing norms, is what gave us Donald Trump. Whether it was abusing the filibuster and stealing a Supreme Court seat, gerrymandering congressional districts to disenfranchise African Americans, or muzzling government climate scientists, Republicans were undermining American democracy long before Trump made it to the Oval Office.

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This is an important point, one that Obama also hit on in his speech last week. It's one that hasn't been made enough, imo.

The trajectory we are on started with Reagan, a man who is now nostalgically remembered as a "reasonable," "moderate" Republican, even by many liberals. He's the one who climbed in bed with the Religious Right. He's the one who tore the solar panels off the white house roof and mocked the environmental movement. He's the one who led the push to discredit government, undermine our schools, and dismantle the social safety net--all so the richest Americans could get richer.

Each GOP POTUS was more polarizing than the one before him, and Republicans who were pro choice, pro environment, pro feminist and pro diversity all but disappeared from Congress and from state governorships and legislatures. Meanwhile, Democrats had to become more "pro business" to get elected, and the only way they could have a prayer at health care reform was to model it after a Republican idea. Even so, it was demonized by the GOP, who apparently were just fine with a system where millions had no insurance at all and insurers could discriminate by gender, refuse to cover pre-existing conditions, impose lifetime and per-illness caps, and drop patients who actually cost them money.

Look at what has happened to the wealth disparity and to political polarization in the intervening decades.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html

http://www.pewresearch.org/packages/political-polarization/

I think this income disparity is a lot of what's poisoning our political climate, and dismantling government isn't going to make it better.

The GOP and rightwing media have successfully sold many Americans on the premise that “less government is always good”.

Are there cases where regulations can be trimmed, and that’s a net benefit to most people? Almost certainly. Let’s honestly duscuss those.

But in general, if you’re a monopoly, or a polluter, or a billionaire, sure, for you it’s better to have less government. For everyone else — those unaware of actual history — you’re not going to like what you’re voting for when you get it.

Don't forget the "War on Drugs," which has systematically locked up minor offenders, most of whom are people of color, and cost trillions. And to what end? So our newest drug emergency can come to you courtesy of Big Pharma, I guess. Well played, Ronnie.

There is also the big lie that anything we spend on necessary community infrastructure and services is redistributing the wealth.

Money gets spent on infrastructure? In the US? Pull my other leg. That's the one with bells on it.

According to ads I've seen on US TV, Domino's Pizza seems to be doing more to fix infrastructure (potholes) than the government is.
If this is in any way true, it's a sad commentary on government services.
Hey, if the government just hired people to fill potholes - bingo! - job creation and the new spending that goes with it.

A little bit more detail on that.

Most city councils had to vote to accept the money as a gift of some sort, and as Motherboard noted, cities had to fill out contracts, manage logistics, and field media requests related to the Domino’s program. For their efforts,the actual repairs were relatively minor. In Bartonville, Texas, Domino’s $5,000 bought a solid 75 tons of asphalt that filled eight potholes, and helped repair another three roads (by Domino’s measures). In Athens, Georgia, it paid a dozen workers for just three hours of work, fixing 150 square yards of road.
All up, the promotion means cities get free money for repairs, and Domino’s quietly works in the background to get some goodwill and publicity out of it. The chain did not attach major strings to the money: a representative tells Eater that cities were completely free to choose which streets would be repaired, meaning the pizza chain did not ask them to repair streets around their own stores (some cities confirmed this). Plus, Domino’s did not require the cities to plaster its logo over the repaired streets, although stencils for this were supplied, and some, such as Bartonville, opted to do that.

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frimble3 said:

Hey, if the government just hired people to fill potholes - bingo! - job creation and the new spending that goes with it.

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The GOP doesn't have friends in heavy construction? I mean, they'd do it if their friends could make money at it, right?

(I really wonder who's going to benefit from funding Space Force! Surely not Elon... )

RedRajah said:

A little bit more detail on that.

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Thanks so much for the details. Especially the last couple of sentences - which suggests that Domino's is trying to do something good. (Although if I were a resident of one of those places, I'd be tempted to slap Domino's stencils on every one of those potholes, just to remind people who their friends were.)

Maybe that would help - figure out how much it costs to fix and fill a pothole, and have sponsorships? Car dealerships, maybe? Trade unions?
(75 tons of asphalt for 8 potholes and related roadwork? On the other hand, asphalt doesn't seem expensive.)

I have no doubt there are committed conservatives who are genuinely happy with The Trump Reality Show and are passionate in their defense of him.

Tragically, being committed and passionate is not enough. Not here. Here you had better step up and back up your pro-Trump rap with some actual proof that he really can walk on water. The anti-Trump crew have zero problem with coming up evidence that Trump is a crook, a thug, a sexist and racist, a bigot, an adulterer and a creepy, sick old man.

Would that the latest troll to be exiled back to the fetid swamps of the Reddit sub-forums and Gab realized they give away the game far too soon by exposing themselves with their "Lock Her Up" Hillary Hate. It's like a burrito and beer fart. They can't hold it in and their weak shit comes out.

Must be the smell...ick.

nighttimer said:

Tragically, being committed and passionate is not enough. Not here.

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Not anywhere. History is filled with the "committed and passionate":

Oliver Cromwell
Adolf Eichmann
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Timothy McVeigh
Guy Fawkes
Che Guevara
Pol Pot
Leon Trotsky
Osama bin-Laden
The Ayatollah Khomeini
Mohammed Atta
Meir Kahanna
John Paul Franklin
George Lincoln Rockwell
Robert Maxwell
Pope Urban II
Jefferson Davis
David Duke
George Armstrong Custer
. . .

Not good enough, just to be "committed and passionate". Whatever happened to the adjective "humane"?

caw

Emilander said:

If you want to think that. I can already tell that anything I could say would just be shouted down. Besides, I'm being serious, I'm not defending Republicans. There is plenty about them that I disagree with that I won't defend of them. Furthermore, since I've never claimed to be a Republican, why should I be called to defend them. My point has consistently been that the current political attitudes and climate in the US is counterproductive and it won't change until both sides stop demonizing each other.

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I agree with you. Vote shaming and shouting down someone for their opposing political opinions is probably the most effective tool in getting someone to vote against your preferred candidate. I was determined to vote for Jill Stein in the general election, but I know of many others who were on the fence about voting for either Hillary or Trump. The vote shaming on the left most likely pushed many into voting for Trump simply because they hated being mocked and ridiculed. The national news and celebrities openly mocked Trump and his followers which didn't help the situation and they openly bragged that the polls indicated that Hillary was a sure bet to win.

I suggest that if Democrats want to win in the future they should focus on strictly policy and leave arrogance, name calling, and vote shaming behind. And perhaps chose a candidate without a tarnished past no matter how "qualified" they may seem.

Underdawg47 said:

...The vote shaming on the left most likely pushed many into voting for Trump simply because they hated being mocked and ridiculed. ...

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There is absolutely not one shred of evidence produced during these conversations to indicate that this is so.

What is certain is that a foreign political power engaged in a wide-ranging, systematic assault on voters and voting mechanisms.

If you have evidence that supports your talking point, we're more than enthusiastic to examine it.

Anecdotally I can say a number of my social circle (no more than 25%) tried to shame me for voting for Clinton over Sanders or Stein, and continue to do so today. While I'm not vested enough to look for evidence, I do think the Bernie Bros phenomenon is widely appreciated enough, even post-2016 election, to argue this is still an issue.

There are certainly schisms between moderates, progressives, and perhaps fringe actors in the left that warrants discussion wrt how to find common ground.

Sorry Underdawg47 but I agree with SWest. Clinton won by 3 million votes. All the folks that blame her and things like Democrats not having a message are repeating what some sources say, but not necessarily what the evidence supports.

The Electoral College, misogyny, Russian interference with email hacking and providing Cambridge Analytical resources to Trump, Trump's outright dishonest claims, and not to be dismissed, wall to wall coverage of Trump 24/7 on the mainstream news— those are things you can find supporting evidence for. Claiming Clinton did a poor job for whatever reason is countered by that three million vote margin she received.

I hear revisionist history about the election more and more often recently including the lie that the hacked emails revealed the DNC rigged the primary against Sanders. Don't get me started on that bullshit. The debate schedule, which was Sanders' main argument did not lose him the election.


Now I can't remember what I came here to post. I'll think of it.