Support NeoGAF

[RustyNails]

Ugh. What happened to Chuck Todd? Why is he continuing to equate Hillary and Trump this week by just generalizing it as "negative name calling"

We already discussed this few pages ago. This past entire week he's being an insufferable bubu bothsides shitbag. He's trying really hard to get a moderator spot in the debates.

 

[Manmademan]

Others already answered, but the other thing is that neocons surrounded themselves with charlatans like Chalabi who promised things like US will be greeted with flowers, etc which the bush admin bought into wholesale.

And then there's Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo and Wolfowitz. These guys created and signed off the torture memos. This practice incensed the sunni communities further, fueling the insurgency.

There are so many factors involved in the Iraq war that wouldnt have applied to Gore/Clinton admin, the biggest one being cooked up intel.

The "gore would have gone into iraq too!" is one of the most ridiculous examples of "both sides are bad" BS I've ever heard.

PNAC had been heavily pushing for Iraq intervention long before Bush was ever elected- sending a letter to B. Clinton urging removal of Hussein in 1998. 10 of the 25 founders went on to serve directly in the bush administration:

Cheyney, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cohen, Dobriansky, Khalilzad, "Scooter" Libby, Rodman, Rumsfeld, and Rowen.

The remaining members of that crew were packed with notable islamophobes (Gaffney), homophobes (Decter), and complete morons (Quayle).

none of those people would have seen the inside of a Gore white house unless they paid for the tour. Without that crew heavily pushing for invasion from day 1, the invasion doesn't happen.

Also consider that the manufacturing of public opinion to equate hussein with 9/11 was done in coordination with the right wing media who reinforced those talking points whenever possible. You think for a second that Fox News/Ailes/Limbaugh/etc would be manufacturing news to promote the interventionist policies of president Gore? They'd be undermining every action he came up with, simply because it came from a democratic president.

 

[ampere]

No Man's Sky...what a clusterfuck. Mess, airhorn etc.

Always looked like Spore 2 to me. Lots of promises, and ends up boring

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Even if we assume a theoretical Gore administration would have been roped into taking action against Iraq based on the same bad intel, the overall goals of that action might have been quite different.

I agree. It's much more difficult to try and hypothesize this world from here on the gang aft agley principle, but I think the most Ba'athist party members would have been offered partial amnesty in exchange for lustration only at elite levels, to try and prevent the exodus from the Iraqi military into al-Qa'ida, as an example. Bush's decision to go hardline on that was perhaps the single worst policy decision made by America in the last two decades if not more; worse even than the original decision to invade Iraq itself. That already makes an enormous difference between what Iraq looks like now and in this alternate world.

 

[Alucrid]

i was out to eat and they had a tv on there and they were talking about the clinton foundation donor - secretary of state meeting link from the emails. like, christ. wasn't that over a week ago? how the fuck are they still on that.

 

[nature boy]

Clinton +3 2-way & +2 4-way new Morning Consult poll, -3 in the H2H from last week:

https://morningconsult.com/2016/08/28/trump-gains-ground-clinton-black-voters-still-wary/

 

[Revolver]

Ugh. What happened to Chuck Todd? Why is he continuing to equate Hillary and Trump this week by just generalizing it as "negative name calling"

I just want to smack him more than usual when he launches into one of those 'is this what it's come to?' commentaries. Like a sober, serious recounting of facts and quotes is the same thing as mudslinging. I get he's trying to look all unbiased and shit but he looks like a tool trying to equate a serious argument to name calling and a new low in politics.

 

[DrForester]

I watched the whole Meet the Press episode. His panel was completely useless.

 

[Gruco]

One was a bombing run aimed at destroying facilities supposed on faulty evidence to be responsible for weapons of mass destruction, and the other was a ground invasion aimed at overthrowing a regime supposed on faulty evidence to be responsible for weapons of mass destruction; so the difference was the degree of commitment, one involving air raids and the other ground forces.

One lasted 3 days, the other 7 years. One had an extremely limited operational goal which was not particularly unusual, the other was a grandiose re-imagining of military policy. So yes, it's a degree of scale, to the same extent that a six year old with a magnifying glass is a useful case study for understanding the operations of a professional exterminator. One was beligence to provoke greater compliance with inspections, one happened after five continuous years of inspections. If you want to make a point that Desert Fox was bad that's cool, but it's neither here nor there. If you want to make the point that it's evidence that democrats would have invaded Iraq in 2003 that's farcical. If you want to say "Clinton's Iraq" would have been three days of cruise missiles, then your point is so different in comparison to Bush as to be meaningless.

However... one happened prior to the Twin Tower bombings and at a point where the neoconservative revival was only half complete, the other occurred when neoconservative sentiment was in the ascendancy. I don't think that a president in 2003 would have thought they'd have won in 2004 running on "I did some bombing runs" when the sentiment at the time was absolutely bloodlusting for ground forces.

So, if you wonder why I am accusing you of being an apologist for the Bush administration with your lazy "both sides do it", this is a good example. You're taking as a given that the public developed a massive independent interest in invading Iraq, almost immediately following 9-11. This is why I asked you earlier in the thread how old you were and how closely you followed American politics in 2002, because this is the kind of mistake that someone who didn't live it would make.

There was massive bloodlust after 9-11....for bin Laden and Afghanistan. I think it's fair to assume that any democratic president would have gone to Afghanistan. That is, assuming that 9-11 happened under Gore, which is an entirely different discussion, but then, the fact that we can even have it is kind of the point. The Bush administration was uniquely aggressive in pushing for war in Iraq along a shocking scale. I mean, the public probably did want to take out Saddam immediately afterwards, but mainly because he was a convenient bad guy. Being pissed off about 9-11 is not the same thing as actively, independently lobbying for war with Iraq because Afghanistan just didn't kick enough ass.

Are we forgetting the public support that the Iraq War had all of a sudden? Someone who didn't do some heavy weight in Iraq would have lost in 2004, easily. And that means most politicians who aren't at least somewhat ideologues would have gone in. I think this argument is very difficult to deny.

Again, that motivation came from a full year of public lobbying. It's like you're completely overlooking the axis of evil speech, Powell at the UN, and the countless surrogates pushing on the morning shows. It involved half-cocking the immediate war that followed 9-11. It involved an insanely ambitious regime change goal and a radical doctrine of preemptive war. Those things didn't just happen, after Afghanistan. They happened because Bush fought for them.

I mean, look, I get that we live in a world where the Iraq war happened, so in some sense it's natural to set it as the baseline and expect that it happened because of independent existential trends. So that's a natural thing to think, but it's laughably ahistorical.

This is boring and juvenile. I think Bush bears a huge amount of fault; I also think he shares in his guilt with most of the American political and media class and while he takes by far the largest portion and could quite reasonably be tried at the Hague, we should hold to account everyone who voted for the Iraq war in some degree, by, for example, not making them a secretary of state.

Yes, and this is exactly why I accuse you of whitewashing the Bush administration. I'm not doing it to just be a dick, you're pushing dangerous right wing points which are horribly wrong and often used to defend war criminals. The Bush administration was not one actor among many who got caught up in the frenzy. The media, the american people, congressfolk all deserve blame, but the blame they deserve is for getting caught up in the sell Bush was giving, not as co-conspirators. This is an incredibly important distinction that you don't see/are not making, and it's the difference between an indifferent Bush administration who was caught up in the trends of the time, and a criminal one who actively deceived the American people in an aggressive manner in order to sell a second war after Afghanistan while radically changing foreign policy doctrine.

To put it another way, if you said "Clinton didn't deserve to become SoS after voting for the Iraq War" instead of "almost anyone would have done the same" we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

[Revolver]

I watched the whole Meet the Press episode. His panel was completely useless.

I don't even know what Andrea Mitchell was doing there. She's like that tenured teacher they can't fire and has to be humored. Joy Reid at least tried to bring up the Points of Light Foundation but she was basically ignored.

 

[Paskil]

Chuck Todd is the only reason I want the zombie apocalypse to happen. Surely even zombie Tim Russert, shambling around the studio trying the eat his guests, would a better Sunday morning news show than the current tripe that passes for MTP.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Lol I met an intercept reporter last night out in Brooklyn he was cool.

What outlet?

I guess I posted about this last night

He knows of GAF too lol

 

[Box of Kittens]

Yeah. If they have the senate, the executive and the judicial, I think they'll be just fine. Judicial isn't something Obama had. I don't know my US history well enough to know if Bill had a favorable supreme court though.

He did not. Broadly speaking, the conservative wing consisted of Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas. The liberals were Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The latter two were appointed early in Clinton's term, replacing White and Blackmun respectively. On the balance this was probably a slightly more favorable court (O'Connor the swing vote instead of Kennedy) but still conservative leaning.

One thing I never noticed until I went through it just now is that when Clinton took office eight of the nine justices were Republican appointees. The only exception was White, a JFK appointee. That's what happens when the Republicans had controlled the White House for 20 of the previous 24 years (and Carter made no Supreme Court appointments). Had it not been for Blackmun, Stevens, and Souter being more liberal than expected at the time of their appointments the court would have been incredibly lopsided.

Again, this doesn't mean it would be the same Iraq. I think anything planned by Clinton would have considered post-invasion Iraq much more keenly, for example. But I don't think it would have been avoided. You'd have needed a politician much more inured to the media temperament of the time. They'd also probably have lost in 2004 if they'd tried; one reason why I think in GoreWorld we probably did go to Iraq after all, or alternatively had President... Romney? in 2004.

Not to sidetrack the discussion too much, but I don't see Romney being the nominee in a hypothetical Gore presidency 2004. He would have all the same problems he did in his 2008 run (little national profile, etc.) but also the disadvantage of only being a half-term governor. If we buy the theory that Republicans would have gone for the "next in line" then McCain would be the more likely nominee, as did happen in 2008.

 

[sc0la]

The "gore would have gone into iraq too!" is one of the most ridiculous examples of "both sides are bad" BS I've ever heard.

PNAC had been heavily pushing for Iraq intervention long before Bush was ever elected- sending a letter to B. Clinton urging removal of Hussein in 1998. 10 of the 25 founders went on to serve directly in the bush administration:

Cheyney, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cohen, Dobriansky, Khalilzad, "Scooter" Libby, Rodman, Rumsfeld, and Rowen.

The remaining members of that crew were packed with notable islamophobes (Gaffney), homophobes (Decter), and complete morons (Quayle).

none of those people would have seen the inside of a Gore white house unless they paid for the tour. Without that crew heavily pushing for invasion from day 1, the invasion doesn't happen.

Also consider that the manufacturing of public opinion to equate hussein with 9/11 was done in coordination with the right wing media who reinforced those talking points whenever possible. You think for a second that Fox News/Ailes/Limbaugh/etc would be manufacturing news to promote the interventionist policies of president Gore? They'd be undermining every action he came up with, simply because it came from a democratic president.

Quoting cause this is a gud post. I was going to post similar thoughts but I'm too lazy to tap it all out on mobile.

 

[Slizeezyc]

Clinton +3 2-way & +2 4-way new Morning Consult poll, -3 in the H2H from last week:

https://morningconsult.com/2016/08/28/trump-gains-ground-clinton-black-voters-still-wary/

DIABLOSSSSSSS

 

[Man God]

Gore as VP also had access to all of the intel from 1993-2000 so he'd know that Iraq wasn't doing shit.

 

[Plinko]

Clinton +3 2-way & +2 4-way new Morning Consult poll, -3 in the H2H from last week:

https://morningconsult.com/2016/08/28/trump-gains-ground-clinton-black-voters-still-wary/

I asked it last week and was roundly criticized, but I'll ask again this week: are these national polls tightening? I haven't seen state polls moving much, but how about the national?

 

[dramatis]

This is boring and juvenile. I think Bush bears a huge amount of fault; I also think he shares in his guilt with most of the American political and media class and while he takes by far the largest portion and could quite reasonably be tried at the Hague, we should hold to account everyone who voted for the Iraq war in some degree, by, for example, not making them a secretary of state.

I think taking critical discussions and turning them into your Hillary-centric critique fests is also boring and juvenile. The first one to bring up Hillary in this conversation is you, when the subject of discussion veers to the Bush vs Gore hypotheticals, somehow you just have to insert Hillary back in there, because god forbid we forget how much you don't like Hillary.

It seems pretty apparent that this conversation isn't actually about holding people accountable but about holding Hillary accountable, because you sure seem like you would prefer shifting some blame off Bush and his administration's back straight onto Hillary Clinton.

 

[Ecotic]

I asked it last week and was roundly criticized, but I'll ask again this week: are these national polls tightening? I haven't seen state polls moving much, but how about the national?

The nationals are tightening a few points from the highs a few weeks ago when Trump was having that disastrous two week stretch, but there's been a dearth of quality national polling. The NBC/WSJ, CNN/ORC, Fox News, CBS/NYTimes polls haven't been seen from in some time. Lately we've only had the Reuters/Ipsos, LATimes/USC, Economist/YouGov, and Gravis tracking polls. The one quality national poll we had was Quinnipiac which showed a very comfortable Hillary +10.

 

[nature boy]

I asked it last week and was roundly criticized, but I'll ask again this week: are these national polls tightening? I haven't seen state polls moving much, but how about the national?

Not with the polls we've seen (unless you consider Breitbart/Gravis a credible pollster). It's tightened in the Morning Consull polls, but more polls are needed to say it's moving in Trump's favor.

Q poll that came out this week is landslide territory, we'll have to wait for the big 5 to do their polling post-Labour day to see where the race really is. NBC/SurveyMonkey shows no significant tightening.

Outside of the garbage tracking polls Clinton has always been ahead.

 

[Gruco]

Gore as VP also had access to all of the intel from 1993-2000 so he'd know that Iraq wasn't doing shit.

Gore would have actually read his daily intelligence briefings. He was a nerd and probably would have corrected their grammar.

Actually, the Clinton administration was planning a massive operation to push back on Al-Qaeda following the bombing of the Cole, which it didn't implement out of respect for the transition.

Had Gore won, it likely would have been implemented, but Bush completely ignored it because PNAC and friends didn't take bin Laden seriously and wanted to invade Iraq even before 9-11 happened.

The Bush administration was pushing for Iraq war even before 9-11. Paul O'Neil and Dick Clarke have both made this public knowledge. Wolfie gave the game away saying that WMD's were just a convenient excuse to convince the public. Everyone in the PNAC took jobs in the Bush administration and wanted this. The towers did not create an existential need, it was an opportunity that was willfully exploited.

But remember, both sides are the same, Bush just had bad intelligence, the Iraq war was a natural fallout from 9-11, and Gore would have invaded Iraq too.

It seems pretty apparent that this conversation isn't actually about holding people accountable but about holding Hillary accountable, because you sure seem like you would prefer shifting some blame off Bush and his administration's back straight onto Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, honestly if Crab wants to be salty about Hillary or not like her that's his business. If he wants to criticize her foreign policy, go for it. But the case can be made without defending the Bush administration. There is no excuse for that.

 

[Retro]

State polls are more important anyway. I'm okay with it narrowing nationally because that's reflecting states she's not likely to win (Texas, the south in general, etc.) or doesn't really need to win (Iowa, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, etc.). So long as states like PA / OH / FL keep leaning Hillary. If she takes even one of those, that's the game. Nothing you guys don't know already.

Narrowing National Poll will at least light the fire under people to vote.

 

[Revolver]

I didn't watch it, but apparently Ann Coulter was ripped apart for her presence at Comedy Central's Rob Lowe Roast and was told to kill herself.

 

[Eusis]

Looks like geographic tongue, I have that. It's 100% benign.

Her greatest secret. What else could she be hiding!?

Spoiler

Perhaps A MOLE?

 

[metalslimer]

Yeah I do think the national polls are tightening a bit but until he actually pulls ahead or even ties in a lot more state polls it's nothing to worry about. We also have only a few weeks to the debate

 

[DrForester]

I didn't watch it, but apparently Ann Coulter was ripped apart for her presence at Comedy Central's Rob Lowe Roast and was told to kill herself.

Wow.

"She seems stiff and conservative, but Ann gets wild in the sheets. Just ask the Klan," said Roast Master David Spade. "It looks like she’s having a good time. I haven’t seen her laugh this hard since Trayvon Martin got shot."

Even Peyton got in on the fun.

Former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning had a joke about her appearance, too: "I just realized that I'm not the only athlete up here tonight. As you all know, earlier this year Ann Coulter won the Kentucky Derby."

 

[Y2Kev]

The point that I was making a week ago (and is still better than FFXV) bad Nate actually made yesterday:

Fundamental "noise" in polling makes it virtually impossible to tell if tracking polls are tightening or not.

 

[Piecake]

The point that I was making a week ago (and is still better than FFXV) bad Nate actually made yesterday:



Fundamental "noise" in polling makes it virtually impossible to tell if tracking polls are tightening or not.

Well, this should be all the proof that we need that Clinton's health is fine

 

[BlastProcessing]

From the NYT: A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories

STOCKHOLM — With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.

The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.

They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.

...The Kremlin uses both conventional media — Sputnik, a news agency, and RT, a television outlet — and covert channels, as in Sweden, that are almost always untraceable.

Russia exploits both approaches in a comprehensive assault, Wilhelm Urme, a spokesman for the Swedish Security Service, said this year when presenting the agency’s annual report. “We mean everything from internet trolls to propaganda and misinformation spread by media companies like RT and Sputnik,” he said.

The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis.

...Although the topics may vary, the goal is the same, Mr. Lindberg and others suggested. “What the Russians are doing is building narratives; they are not building facts,” he said. “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”

The weaponization of information is not some project devised by a Kremlin policy expert but is an integral part of Russian military doctrine — what some senior military figures call a “decisive” battlefront.

...“The Russians are very good at courting everyone who has a grudge with liberal democracy, and that goes from extreme right to extreme left,” said Patrik Oksanen, an editorial writer for the Swedish newspaper group MittMedia. The central idea, he said, is that “liberal democracy is corrupt, inefficient, chaotic and, ultimately, not democratic.”

...In the Czech Republic, alarming, sensational stories portraying the United States, the European Union and immigrants as villains appear daily across a cluster of about 40 pro-Russia websites.

...A poll this summer by European Values, a think tank in Prague, found that 51 percent of Czechs viewed the United States’ role in Europe negatively, only 32 percent viewed the European Union positively, and at least a quarter believed some elements of the disinformation.

...Speaking this summer on the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Information Bureau, Mr. Kiselyev said the age of neutral journalism was over. “If we do propaganda, then you do propaganda, too,” he said, directing his message to Western journalists.

...“Today, it is much more costly to kill one enemy soldier than during World War II, World War I or in the Middle Ages,” he said in an interview on the state-run Rossiya 24 network. While the business of “persuasion” is more expensive now, too, he said, “if you can persuade a person, you don’t need to kill him.”

The whole article is worth reading. As a nation, we have to get on top of this shit or it's really going to bite us in the ass.

Spoiler

Fuck Jill Stein.

 

[Plinko]

Not with the polls we've seen (unless you consider Breitbart/Gravis a credible pollster). It's tightened in the Morning Consull polls, but more polls are needed to say it's moving in Trump's favor.

Q poll that came out this week is landslide territory, we'll have to wait for the big 5 to do their polling post-Labour day to see where the race really is. NBC/SurveyMonkey shows no significant tightening.

Outside of the garbage tracking polls Clinton has always been ahead.

Which polls do you all consider "garbage polls" here? Gravis? Rasmussen?

 

[Manmademan]

One lasted 3 days, the other 7 years. One had an extremely limited operational goal which was not particularly unusual, the other was a grandiose re-imagining of military policy. So yes, it's a degree of scale, to the same extent that a six year old with a magnifying glass is a useful case study for understanding the operations of a professional exterminator. One was beligence to provoke greater compliance with inspections, one happened after five continuous years of inspections. If you want to make a point that Desert Fox was bad that's cool, but it's neither here nor there. If you want to make the point that it's evidence that democrats would have invaded Iraq in 2003 that's farcical. If you want to say "Clinton's Iraq" would have been three days of cruise missiles, then your point is so different in comparison to Bush as to be meaningless.


So, if you wonder why I am accusing you of being an apologist for the Bush administration with your lazy "both sides do it", this is a good example. You're taking as a given that the public developed a massive independent interest in invading Iraq, almost immediately following 9-11. This is why I asked you earlier in the thread how old you were and how closely you followed American politics in 2002, because this is the kind of mistake that someone who didn't live it would make.

There was massive bloodlust after 9-11....for bin Laden and Afghanistan. I think it's fair to assume that any democratic president would have gone to Afghanistan. That is, assuming that 9-11 happened under Gore, which is an entirely different discussion, but then, the fact that we can even have it is kind of the point. The Bush administration was uniquely aggressive in pushing for war in Iraq along a shocking scale. I mean, the public probably did want to take out Saddam immediately afterwards, but mainly because he was a convenient bad guy. Being pissed off about 9-11 is not the same thing as actively, independently lobbying for war with Iraq because Afghanistan just didn't kick enough ass.


Again, that motivation came from a full year of public lobbying. It's like you're completely overlooking the axis of evil speech, Powell at the UN, and the countless surrogates pushing on the morning shows. It involved half-cocking the immediate war that followed 9-11. It involved an insanely ambitious regime change goal and a radical doctrine of preemptive war. Those things didn't just happen, after Afghanistan. They happened because Bush fought for them.

I mean, look, I get that we live in a world where the Iraq war happened, so in some sense it's natural to set it as the baseline and expect that it happened because of independent existential trends. So that's a natural thing to think, but it's laughably ahistorical.



Yes, and this is exactly why I accuse you of whitewashing the Bush administration. I'm not doing it to just be a dick, you're pushing dangerous right wing points which are horribly wrong and often used to defend war criminals. The Bush administration was not one actor among many who got caught up in the frenzy. The media, the american people, congressfolk all deserve blame, but the blame they deserve is for getting caught up in the sell Bush was giving, not as co-conspirators. This is an incredibly important distinction that you don't see/are not making, and it's the difference between an indifferent Bush administration who was caught up in the trends of the time, and a criminal one who actively deceived the American people in an aggressive manner in order to sell a second war after Afghanistan while radically changing foreign policy doctrine.

To put it another way, if you said "Clinton didn't deserve to become SoS after voting for the Iraq War" instead of "almost anyone would have done the same" we wouldn't be having this conversation.

God DAMN that's a hell of a post.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Which polls do you all consider "garbage polls" here? Gravis? Rasmussen?

Gravis, People's Pundit Daily, UPI/CVOTER, and LATimes (not necessarily garbage because it's a survey and not a poll but something is wrong with their survey panel).

The others are kind of decent but still online polls for the most part like Reuters, Yougov, SurveyMonkey, and Rasmussen. Reuters has been all over the place lately though, they're having some trouble. Yougov and Reuters consistently show Obama approval numbers below the current averages so something is off there too.

 

[Revolver]

Wow.



Even Peyton got in on the fun.

I guess it's supposed to air on Labor Day. I don't usually watch those roasts but it sounds like they didn't hold back on Ann.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

I think taking critical discussions and turning them into your Hillary-centric critique fests is also boring and juvenile. The first one to bring up Hillary in this conversation is you, when the subject of discussion veers to the Bush vs Gore hypotheticals, somehow you just have to insert Hillary back in there, because god forbid we forget how much you don't like Hillary.

It seems pretty apparent that this conversation isn't actually about holding people accountable but about holding Hillary accountable, because you sure seem like you would prefer shifting some blame off Bush and his administration's back straight onto Hillary Clinton.

Y'all gonna make Crab Brexit this thread.

The point that I was making a week ago (and is still better than FFXV) bad Nate actually made yesterday:



Fundamental "noise" in polling makes it virtually impossible to tell if tracking polls are tightening or not.

Yeah, I don't even see the point in these polls. If it moves like that, it's probably garbage. And I teach statistics.

Well, this should be all the proof that we need that Clinton's health is fine

Lol.

Which polls do you all consider "garbage polls" here? Gravis? Rasmussen?

To my knowledge, Ras is only biased, not trash, so you can just adjust their polls. I think Gravis has a poor track record. The others we're getting sometimes aren't even really polls but panels and whatnot. The big pollsters have been quiet for awhile (listed above in another post). Only Q has been a good pollster still doing work pre-debate, and they had Clinton +10. I don't think there's been all that much movement. Certainly not in individual states, so it's a moot point anyway.

 

[Paches]

Had my first nightmare last night where I woke up from a coma or something and someone told me Trump won the election and I was terrified.

 

[Basileus777]

State polls are more important anyway. I'm okay with it narrowing nationally because that's reflecting states she's not likely to win (Texas, the south in general, etc.) or doesn't really need to win (Iowa, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, etc.). So long as states like PA / OH / FL keep leaning Hillary. If she takes even one of those, that's the game. Nothing you guys don't know already.

The actual Presidential race is over, so you could argue that the national polls matter more because they indicate how severe Trump's loss will be and thus how much effect there could be on downticket races.

Narrowing National Poll will at least light the fire under people to vote.

This is the opposite of what we want, which is to discourage Republican turnout by having Trump down big.

 

[User 463088]

Had my first nightmare last night where I woke up from a coma or something and someone told me Trump won the election and I was terrified.

The five year old is still terrified of Trump. He's always had nightmares, but he's been having more and more of them about Trump. We got him to agree to sleep with one of my Hillary shirts in bed, and told him it would help him not have nightmares about him. So far, it's working. Trump is fucking evil, man.

 

[Retro]

The actual Presidential race is over, so you could argue that the national polls matter more because they indicate how severe Trump's loss will be and thus how much effect there could be on downticket races.

That's a good point since it's getting data from states we're not getting polls from regularly.

This is the opposite of what we want, which is to discourage Republican turnout by having Trump down big.

My concern is always the kid saying "Well, if Hillary is guaranteed to win why should I bother voting?" I also think that Trump's effect on the Republican voters is already a done deal no matter how he polls; his supporters are so fanatical there's no way they don't vote and those who are driven away are not going to come back. Polarizing figure is polarizing.

The five year old is still terrified of Trump. He's always had nightmares, but he's been having more and more of them about Trump. We got him to agree to sleep with one of my Hillary shirts in bed, and told him it would help him not have nightmares about him. So far, it's working. Trump is fucking evil, man.

This is adorable.

 

[Y2Kev]

I think it's fun to say but the presidential race is not over.

 

[Trouble]

I think my dislike of Chuck Todd is 90% haircut, 10% goatee.

 

[Plinko]

I think it's fun to say but the presidential race is not over.

Absolutely 100% true. Been saying this for weeks.

 

[nature boy]

Which polls do you all consider "garbage polls" here? Gravis? Rasmussen?

What Bam Bam said, but I'm also a bit hesitant to consider Q a credible poll. Some of these universities uses polls as a marketing tool just to get out their name to students. Not saying they're faking the poll results, but they don't put the care into

Any automated phone based poll should be put in a inferior category of polls. So while I like PPP, their polls just gives a general notion of what's happening in a state.

Mark Murphy had a democratic pollster on Free Radio GOP last week or 2 weeks ago. Worth a listen.

If I post PPD or USC I'm just looking for the diablosing, don't take them seriously.

The big 5 National and state polls I would say are at the top, along with Pew Research.

 

[Fox318]

People here forget what gaf was like in 2007 with the Chuck Todd gotee love.

 

[Revolver]

Had my first nightmare last night where I woke up from a coma or something and someone told me Trump won the election and I was terrified.

I had a dream about the debates and Hillary kept coughing and having to drink water. Trump seemed prepared and even likable. It was awful.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

One lasted 3 days, the other 7 years. One had an extremely limited operational goal which was not particularly unusual, the other was a grandiose re-imagining of military policy. So yes, it's a degree of scale, to the same extent that a six year old with a magnifying glass is a useful case study for understanding the operations of a professional exterminator. One was beligence to provoke greater compliance with inspections, one happened after five continuous years of inspections. If you want to make a point that Desert Fox was bad that's cool, but it's neither here nor there. If you want to make the point that it's evidence that democrats would have invaded Iraq in 2003 that's farcical. If you want to say "Clinton's Iraq" would have been three days of cruise missiles, then your point is so different in comparison to Bush as to be meaningless.

This is cool and all, but I feel like you aren't actually reading my posts very well. Let's start from the start, with a relatively simple series of steps:

1. Politicians, unless they are ideologues, bow to expected public sentiment over the immediate short-term of their careers.
2. If the available information is unclear, then public sentiment is unlikely to be overturned by appeal to any information, on the basis of FUD.
3. Public sentiment was in favour of war in Iraq, and would have been regardless of the incumbent, if to different degrees.
4. Clinton (Mr.), Clinton (Mrs.) and Gore are not ideologues.
5. The available information was unclear.

Ergo:

6. Clinton (Mr.), Clinton (Mrs.) and Gore would have almost certainly gone into Iraq.

I cite Desert Fox as supporting evidence of this. No, it's not on the same scale. Like, I never asserted that, and responded quite reasonably to your request to differentiate the two. That's not the point, and your response back is just telling me something I already know and missing the point. Rather, Desert Fox is a practical example of the above argument.

1. Clinton (Mr.) had struggling approval ratings on account of the on-going impeachment process and so felt even more pressure than normal to acquiesce to public sentiment.
2. Most of the good evidence weighed up against Desert Fox, but there was some less reliable information that indicated an escalation of Iraq's WMD programme. Clinton (Mr.) could not appeal to the information indicating this was a bad idea, because the public wanted intervention and was willing to ignore information to the contrary despite the lower quality of the information involved.
3. Public sentiment was in favour of intervention, as Gallup's polling of the time shows.
4. Clinton (Mr.) is not an ideologue. (I hope you don't want me to cite this?)
5. As aforementioned, the information was unclear.

Ergo:

6. Clinton (Mr.) decided to intervene in Desert Fox.

Yes, Iraq is of a different scale. I know that, you know that. However, it is an example of the same forces at work. You can apply exactly the same argument I've used twice above, and you will come to the same conclusion. Let's follow:

1. Gore or Clinton (Mrs.) would have felt enormous pressure to be seen as a defender of American interests in the aftermath of the Twin Towers. The pressure would have been vastly higher than Clinton (Mr.)'s impeachment struggles. If you look at Gallup polling from the time, 86% of respondents cited their most important issue as national security, over economy, immigration, climate change, you name it.
2. Most of the good evidence weighed up against a regime intervention, but there was sufficient FUD that it wasn't possible to take this point further. As an example: the British Labour government had *exactly the same information available*, and was split down the middle by the credibility, despite having a much larger incentive to think about it given how much more strongly anti-war their base was.
3. Public sentiment would have been for intervention even in this alternate world (I'll talk more about this later).
4. Neither Gore nor Clinton (Mrs.) are ideologues.
5. As aforementioned, the information was unclear.

Ergo:

6. Either would also have gone into Iraq.

So you need to disprove that argument.

Here's how you could do it, by making one of three counter-points:

1. A Gore or Clinton (Mrs.) presidency in 2000 would have rather lost the 2004 presidency than intervened.
2. The information against Iraq available to those in a position of power was a) incontrovertibly clear cut and b) could have feasibly been made publicly available.
3. Public sentiment would not have been in favour of an intervention in Iraq under a hypothetical Gore or Clinton (Mrs.) presidency.

You've chosen not to contest 1 or 2, and instead have gone for 3, as per here:

You're taking as a given that the public developed a massive independent interest in invading Iraq, almost immediately following 9-11. This is why I asked you earlier in the thread how old you were and how closely you followed American politics in 2002, because this is the kind of mistake that someone who didn't live it would make.

There was massive bloodlust after 9-11....for bin Laden and Afghanistan. I think it's fair to assume that any democratic president would have gone to Afghanistan. That is, assuming that 9-11 happened under Gore, which is an entirely different discussion, but then, the fact that we can even have it is kind of the point. The Bush administration was uniquely aggressive in pushing for war in Iraq along a shocking scale. I mean, the public probably did want to take out Saddam immediately afterwards, but mainly because he was a convenient bad guy. Being pissed off about 9-11 is not the same thing as actively, independently lobbying for war with Iraq because Afghanistan just didn't kick enough ass.

Again, that motivation came from a full year of public lobbying. It's like you're completely overlooking the axis of evil speech, Powell at the UN, and the countless surrogates pushing on the morning shows. It involved half-cocking the immediate war that followed 9-11. It involved an insanely ambitious regime change goal and a radical doctrine of preemptive war. Those things didn't just happen, after Afghanistan. They happened because Bush fought for them.

Right, cool, great. Again, you are telling me a bunch of things I already know that don't disprove my point, by explaining how these public forces came to work in this world. Let's do the alternative: GoreWorld (I'll leave ClintonWorld aside, as that's obviously a more stretched hypothetical as she wasn't running, but I think the story would be comparable).

Bush loses Florida by 700 votes, Gore is elected, the date is January 20th, 2001. What does politics look like? Well, all of the neoconservatives are still in significant positions within the Republican party. They're still in significant positions in academia. They're still in significant public lobbying positions. Bush's loss didn't change any of that. They still have exactly the same objectives: engineer a war in Iraq, under whatever pretext. They've lost the presidential bully pulpit, but they're still hugely influential. They have Fox News to spread their bile. They're still dominating publications like Foreign Affairs, which shaped think tanks on both sides of the aisle, including Democratic ones. The Republicans are still intimately associated with being the party that takes a hardline foreign policy stance.

Then the Twin Towers happens. What do these Republicans do? They attack Gore. They hound him. Bush ran on a tough foreign policy. If Bush had been President, then the Twin Towers would never have happened (not true, but you know it is what GoreWorld Republicans would have run). Gore is weak on foreign policy. Gore let down America. If only you'd elected Republican, everything would have been great. Every day on Fox News will be the idea that Gore has been weak, weak, weak. It'll get legs on CNN - how could it not? The public is hysteric after such an incident. It might even spread into some liberal circles. This is still Blue Dog days, and neoconservatism has always influenced a part of the Democratic Party.

What happens in the 2002 House elections? The Republicans won those anyway, on a landslide. Now the narrative is Gore betrayed America. 2002 in BushWorld would look tame. A 240 or even 250 Republican seat outcome is pretty likely, given they don't have the electoral disadvantage (from a House perspective) of controlling the presidency. Even now Trump often leads Clinton on national security polling and this is a guy whose former campaign manager has Putin links.

The public mood is febrile. Gore is a dead duck President. The Republicans control 56 Senate seats and the House by a big majority. All it takes is a few House Republicans (again, with the Republican Party under huge neoconservative influence) to say: Saddam Hussein is going to be the next Twin Towers if we don't get him. And Fox News will catch that, and CNN will catch that, and the Republicans will run, run, run with it because Gore is the president that let the Twin Towers happen. And then Gore has a choice: he goes into Iraq (in some capacity), or he accepts that in 2004, the Republicans take the presidency.

So, sure, sure. The Republicans don't have the presidential bully pulpit. But do you really think that stops them? Because if so, with respect, I don't think you understand much about politics.

Yes, and this is exactly why I accuse you of whitewashing the Bush administration. I'm not doing it to just be a dick, you're pushing dangerous right wing points which are horribly wrong and often used to defend war criminals.

Yawn. How does "I think Bush should stand at the Hague" become "I am defending a war criminal"?

The Bush administration was not one actor among many who got caught up in the frenzy. The media, the american people, congressfolk all deserve blame, but the blame they deserve is for getting caught up in the sell Bush was giving, not as co-conspirators.

Yes, I agree, completely. I'm just pointing out that this sell 100% also happens in GoreWorld. It's not from Bush, but rather from the Republicans in the House and every single Republican who fancies a shot in 2004, but it still gets sold, because it's not like you take out Bush and every neoconservative slowly collapses into a puddle while screaming "I'm melting!". They're still around, they still control most facets of the Republican Party, and they still have the tragedy of the Twin Towers to spin into "Democrats aren't saving our country".

This is an incredibly important distinction that you don't see/are not making, and it's the difference between an indifferent Bush administration who was caught up in the trends of the time, and a criminal one who actively deceived the American people in an aggressive manner in order to sell a second war after Afghanistan while radically changing foreign policy doctrine.

I really feel like you aren't reading my posts. I *never*, repeat, *never* said the Bush administration was indifferent. Of course not, they wanted this. I'm just pointing out that the presidential pulpit was not a necessary means into manipulating public sentiment to the point that *any* president would have had to have acted. Bush actively desired it, Gore would have been pushed into it; there's obviously a huge moral gate between those two things. But the actual consequences are similar.

To put it another way, if you said "Clinton didn't deserve to become SoS after voting for the Iraq War" instead of "almost anyone would have done the same" we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Both statements are true.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I would normally respond to dramatis' post, but frankly if it were any lower quality it wouldn't look out of place in a Republican presidential debate, so I'll leave it be.

 

[pigeon]

1. Politicians, unless they are ideologues, bow to expected public sentiment over the immediate short-term of their careers.
2. If the available information is unclear, then public sentiment is unlikely to be overturned by appeal to any information, on the basis of FUD.
3. Public sentiment was in favour of war in Iraq, and would have been regardless of the incumbent, if to different degrees.

Nope, this is false. Americans had no particular desire to invade Iraq. We weren't huge fans, sure, but invasion is on another order.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Nope, this is false. Americans had no particular desire to invade Iraq. We weren't huge fans, sure, but invasion is on another order.

Are you going to respond to the paragraphs I set out explaining why they would have? Or are you just going to say "no u"?

 

[Crisco]

You cannot ignore the simple fact that elements within the Bush administration were pushing for regime change in Iraq from day 1, before 9/11 or "war on terror" became a thing. Invading Iraq would have never entered the public discourse had Gore been President, no one cared about Hussein except the neocons. Ergo, anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant of historical fact.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

You cannot ignore the simple fact that elements within the Bush administration were pushing for regime change in Iraq from day 1, before 9/11 or "war on terror" became a thing. Invading Iraq would have never entered the public discourse had Gore been President, no one cared about Hussein except the neocons. Ergo, anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant of historical fact.

...right, which is why I didn't ignore it, and it is specifically addressed in my post above.

C'mon, PoliGAF. Make some effort.