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Donald Trump, the road that might not lead to the White House!

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bluescreen said:
Sigh. Of course. But the thing is they (the Americans) have done this provocative thing now and they (the Chinese) have taken it to the next level. It means something, which is that the Chinese won't be messed with, and as far as I can see the Americans don't have much to retaliate with unless they ramp it up to an insanely dangerous level, which they aren't going to do. The Chinese know that, and they have chosen now to do it to show Trump (Obama is a dead duck) who's in charge - or to challenge him to a fight he'll fail at.
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Jeez, I hope the Chinese realise what a friggin fruitloop they are trying to engage with, in delicate nuanced global diplomacy.
 
Well, when Obama finishes his presidency and finally gets around to making an Urban75 account and finds this thread I think he will get quite a poor reception from his staunchest supporters.

Transcript: Obama’s end-of-year news conference on Syria, Russian hacking and more

“What I've said is that I can maybe give some counsel advice to the Democratic Party. And I think the -- the -- the thing we have to spend the most time on -- because it's the thing we have most control over -- is, how do we make sure that we're showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they're not being heard?

And where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte- sipping, you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks, we have to be in those communities. And I've seen that, when we are in those communities, it makes a difference. That's how I became president. I became a U.S. Senator not just because I had a strong base in Chicago, but because I was driving downstate Illinois and going to fish fries and sitting in V.F.W. Halls and talking to farmers.

And I didn't win every one of their votes, but they got a sense of what I was talking about, what I cared about, that I was for working people, that I was for the middle class, that the reason I was interested in strengthening unions and raising the minimum wage and rebuilding our infrastructure and making sure that parents had decent childcare and family leave, was because my own family's history wasn't that different from theirs even if I looked a little bit different. Same thing in Iowa.

And so the question is, how do we rebuild that party as a whole, so that there's not a county in any state -- I don't care how red -- where we don't have a presence and we're not making the argument, because I think we have a better argument. But that requires a lot of work. You know, it's been something that I've been able to do successfully in my own campaigns.”
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If you have something of substance to say, why not dispense with cloaking it in a joke, and just get down to business?

Communications pointer: the joke will trump substance every time [no pun intended].
 
But wait, there is still a ray of hope

Celebrities beg Republican electors: Don't vote Trump
It is meant to be a heartfelt appeal from some of the US's most recognisable faces. Actors Martin Sheen and Debra Messing are joined by a host of other celebrities - including musician Moby - to ask Republican electors to not cast their vote for President-elect Donald Trump on 19 December.
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The argument put forward in the Unite for America clip is simple - Mr Trump is not fit to be president of the United States, and therefore members of the Electoral College should block his entry to the White House.
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"Our founding fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is, to an eminent degree, endowed with the requisite qualifications," Sheen explains in the video.
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So, will we be spared the horrors of a Trump presidency thanks to this timely intervention?
a study of possible voters in Ohio by professors Melissa Miller and David Jackson, both of Bowling Green State University, found that celebrity endorsements are potentially the opposite of helpful. Writing in The Daily Beast, Mr Jackson revealed: "None of the celebrities [given as possible endorsers in the study] showed a net positive effect, and four of them showed double-digit net negative effects."
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a quick glance at the response on Twitter to the Unite for America video shows there is no appetite for the 1% to lecture the majority on how they should vote.
"You stick to pretending to be somebody else," wrote one. "Nobody gives the rear end of a rodent what you and your pampered friends think."
Another tweeted: "Y'all prove one thing. being a so-called educated intellectual doesn't mean you have common sense."
Meanwhile, a meme mused whether celebrities were more upset about the election result, of "finding out people don't give a **** about their opinions".
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You know things have got pretty bad if the members of the Electoral College aren't prepared to ignore the wishes of the US electorate on the say-so of such renowned political thinkers as Lena Dunham and Moby :eek:
 
andysays said:
But wait, there is still a ray of hope

Celebrities beg Republican electors: Don't vote Trump




So, will we be spared the horrors of a Trump presidency thanks to this timely intervention?



You know things have got pretty bad if the members of the Electoral College aren't prepared to ignore the wishes of the US electorate on the say-so of such renowned political thinkers as Lena Dunham and Moby :eek:
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Liberal hysteria is getting to actually dangerous levels. there is just no grasp on reality here at all, they have already derided and politically attacked all institutions of extra parliamentary power like labour unions and now they are degenerating to the political analysis of Sovereign Citizens.
 
They've got every right to ask electors to change their minds - the US is in a situation that has only happened twice in 130 years, with the candidate who lost the popular vote set to take office because of a weird quirk in the system, only natural for his opponents to be looking into other weird quirks in the system.
 
Yossarian said:
They've got every right to ask electors to change their minds - the US is in a situation that has only happened twice in 130 years, with the candidate who lost the popular vote set to take office because of a weird quirk in the system, only natural for his opponents to be looking into other weird quirks in the system.
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What "weird quirk in the system" are you referring to?
 
The way that in rare cases, the Electoral College can hand victory to the person who lost the popular vote, because the whole system was set up hundreds of years ago by people who were still a little iffy about letting ordinary voters choose a president.
 
Yossarian said:
The way that in rare cases, the Electoral College can hand victory to the person who lost the popular vote, because the whole system was set up hundreds of years ago by people who were still a little iffy about letting ordinary voters choose a president.
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I don't think the question of who won or lost the popular vote is really relevant here. The Electoral College in the US works on a Federal/state-by-state basis, where the popular vote across the whole country isn't the deciding factor.

Certainly, this celebrity appeal to the "electors" over the heads of the actual electorate doesn't appear to be based on anything to do with the popular vote, so while they may not have much grip on political reality, they do at least have a better appreciation of the constitutional position than you seem to.
 
"Clearly something horrifying has happened to America’s great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them. This is, after all, how cults get started. Cultists will venerate any messianic mediocrity and any set of half-baked spiritual dogmas; it’s not the overt content that matters but the security of knowing. If Trump’s devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the “alt-right,” the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen."

The Deranged Twitter Thread That Proves Establishment Liberals Have Lost Their Minds
 
Idris2002 said:
"Clearly something horrifying has happened to America’s great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them. This is, after all, how cults get started. Cultists will venerate any messianic mediocrity and any set of half-baked spiritual dogmas; it’s not the overt content that matters but the security of knowing. If Trump’s devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the “alt-right,” the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen."

The Deranged Twitter Thread That Proves Establishment Liberals Have Lost Their Minds
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Alt-Center:D

I heard another one a few weeks ago, "The Radical Center", I'd like to add my own, the extremely dangerous gaggle of maniacs that is "The Extreme Center".... or maybe "The Far Center".
 
Idris2002 said:
"Clearly something horrifying has happened to America’s great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them. This is, after all, how cults get started. Cultists will venerate any messianic mediocrity and any set of half-baked spiritual dogmas; it’s not the overt content that matters but the security of knowing. If Trump’s devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the “alt-right,” the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen."

The Deranged Twitter Thread That Proves Establishment Liberals Have Lost Their Minds
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I don't think the writer is American (his website says he's in London and trying to leave,) and it shows because he's completely missing why many folk on the left in US terms are so dazed and confused. I think this message underneath it explains the situ much better.

Jaydee

On the one hand, I entirely agree with this piece. I was mystified as to why that Eric Garland tweetstorm was being praised so highly. I found it incoherent as well, and reread it twice looking for the "game theory" in it. Thanks for the confirmation of my discovery that it just wasn't in there. I'd LOVE to hear a game theory analysis of what Dems can and should do going forward, but that stream of consciousness rant wasn't it.

On the other hand, there's no way to chalk up what happened here just to Hillary's mistakes, or to any one thing really. There were a lot of forces at work - but I think the main one was the fact that, after 8 years of Obama and a gradually, incrementally improving economy, voters lost sight of how delicate our democracy really is. They fell back so easily into old patterns of thinking that no matter who is president, we'll be fine, therefore they might as well vote their feelings.

For belligerent whites, that meant lashing out at all the talk that white male supremacy is obsolete. They turned to a vicious, meanspirited moron who reflected their own hatreds and angers.

For a lot of young people, that meant voting third party out of the sense that elections are about personal expression and not pragmatic choices. They hated Hillary with a passion that was sometimes even stronger than the hate from the right, and just as irrational and inexplicable. She wasn't Obama. She wasn't perfect. But she wasn't evil incarnate either, the way so many clearly felt.

In the end, the combination of Russian coordinated leaks of private information, of FBI collusion with the authoritarian candidate, of Hillary's old fashioned attitudes, of misogyny, of white racism, all of it colliding with an American public narcissistically obsessed with its own feelings and intellectually flaccid enough to be manipulated with tweets and fake news .... that's what happened here.

What to do next isn't going to be as simple as any one phrase or theory. People have to start caring about facts over feelings again. And the only way that's probably going to happen is if Trump is a big enough failure to trigger enough negative feelings to get people focused back on fact based ways to fix what they've done.

edit: I do think the post above is drawing a false distinction between "beligerent whites" and other white people. The red hat wearing, placard waving, punch throwing and poll intimidating white folks were the tip of the iceberg. Plenty more unremarkable white people of all socio-economic classes didn't make a song and dance of their support for Trump, but cast their votes and are very pleased with the results.
 
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Some spot-on stuff as ever from Sam Kriss, though I get the impression that media outlets like NBC are getting more excited about the Russia hacking story than the average American liberal.

It wasn’t the Russians who told the Democratic Party to abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base. It wasn’t the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail—“vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins.” The Russians didn’t come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like “I’m with her” or “America is already great.” The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.
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Idris2002 said:
Sorry, CRI, but that message you've cut and pasted just sounds like self-exculpating wishful thinking again.
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Yes, it sounds like that to you. It doesn't sound like that to many Americans on the left of the US political spectrum. That is the point I'm trying to make.

I know this is a UK based message board and probably 95% of contributors are British or British folks abroad. Fair enough. But, I have noticed when some of the Americans or ex-Americans here try to explain (not necessarily even agree) why some Americans think and do this or that, from a position of experience, it gets rubbished. Lost count of the times folk have refused to countenance the embedded white supremacy in the US, usually with a, "Naw, mate, it's all about class," when no buddy, it's not.
 
CRI said:
Yes, it sounds like that to you. It doesn't sound like that to many Americans on the left of the US political spectrum. That is the point I'm trying to make.

I know this is a UK based message board and probably 95% of contributors are British or British folks abroad. Fair enough. But, I have noticed when some of the Americans or ex-Americans here try to explain (not necessarily even agree) why some Americans think and do this or that, from a position of experience, it gets rubbished. Lost count of the times folk have refused to countenance the embedded white supremacy in the US, usually with a, "Naw, mate, it's all about class," when no buddy, it's not.
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It's all about class, even when you think it's not, because the objective material factors that make it all about class, and which also underpin the embedded white supremacy in your country, exist whether you want them to or not
 
Idris2002 said:
Sorry, CRI, but that message you've cut and pasted just sounds like self-exculpating wishful thinking again.
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It's a tenet of faith for people like CRI that Hillary Clinton cannot fail, she can only be failed by potential voters.

edit: tenet, not tenant, what an unpresidented spelling error!
 
This is an article by Paul Krugman BTW, not Alex Jones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/useful-idiots-galore.html

Let me explain what I mean by saying that bad guys hacked the election. I’m not talking about some kind of wild conspiracy theory. I’m talking about the obvious effect of two factors on voting: the steady drumbeat of Russia-contrived leaks about Democrats, and only Democrats, and the dramatic, totally unjustified last-minute intervention by the F.B.I., which appears to have become a highly partisan institution, with distinct alt-right sympathies.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/now-america-you-know-how-chileans-felt.html?_r=0

DURHAM, N.C. — It is familiar, the outrage and alarm that many Americans are feeling at reports that Russia, according to a secret intelligence assessment, interfered in the United States election to help Donald J. Trump become president.

I have been through this before, overwhelmed by a similar outrage and alarm.

To be specific: On the morning of Oct. 22, 1970, in what was then my home in Santiago de Chile, my wife, Angélica, and I listened to a news flash on the radio. Gen. René Schneider, the head of Chile’s armed forces, had been shot by a commando on a street of the capital. He was not expected to survive.

Angélica and I had the same automatic reaction: It’s the C.I.A., we said, almost in unison. We had no proof at the time — though evidence that we were right would eventually, and abundantly, surface — but we did not doubt that this was one more American attempt to subvert the will of the Chilean people.

Six weeks earlier, Salvador Allende, a democratic Socialist, had won the presidency in a free and fair election, in spite of the United States’ spending millions of dollars on psychological warfare and misinformation to prevent his victory (we’d call it “fake news” today). Allende had campaigned on a program of social and economic justice, and we knew that the government of President Richard M. Nixon, allied with Chile’s oligarchs, would do everything it could to stop Allende’s nonviolent revolution from gaining power.

The country was rife with rumors of a possible coup. It had happened in Guatemala and Iran, in Indonesia and Brazil, where leaders opposed to United States interests had been ousted; now it was Chile’s turn. That was why General Schneider was assassinated. Because, having sworn loyalty to the Constitution, he stubbornly stood in the way of those destabilization plans.
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