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PoliGAF 2016 |OT16| Unpresidented

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A

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
I want to believe the policies Trump is pursuing and the people in his cabinet are setting him up for failure and a backlash from voters, but I just don't know anymore. Maybe no matter how bad he does he'll get reelected anyway, like Brownback. Not an apple-to-apple comparison but the last three presidents did get second terms.
 
J

JP_

Banned
kess said:
Perhaps the silver lining is that it's being ushered in by way of the craziest motherfucking lunatics who have no sense of subtlety whatsoever. Democrats will have to take a page from the Republican playbook and engage in the most theatrical legislative resistance possible, or they can just roll over and die.
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Yeah, the FCC might just obliterate all the NN rules. But the telecoms will sit on it and go "SEE, you were worried for nothing!"

Then they'll quietly implement new breaches of net neutrality and nobody seems to notice
 
Z

Zukkoyaki

Member
I'm still not convinced he's going to run for re-election. He's already 70 and I get the vibe he's going to haaaate the actual job of being president. Plus he doesn't want to possibly lose. He already won and can go out a surefire winner if he comes in does his term and rides off a "winner."

But wishful thinking is getting ever more difficult.
 
M

mo60

Member
A Human Becoming said:
I want to believe the policies Trump is pursuing and the people in his cabinet are setting him up for failure and a backlash from voters, but I just don't know anymore. Maybe no matter how bad he does he'll get reelected anyway, like Brownback. Not an apple-to-apple comparison but the last three presidents did get second terms.
Click to expand...

It's possible internal/external events like other upopular governments do help to weaken trump signficantly eventually even though it probably won't be apparent until probably 2020.
 
T

TestOfTide

Banned
A Human Becoming said:
I want to believe the policies Trump is pursuing and the people in his cabinet are setting him up for failure and a backlash from voters, but I just don't know anymore. Maybe no matter how bad he does he'll get reelected anyway, like Brownback. Not an apple-to-apple comparison but the last three presidents did get second terms.
Click to expand...

Think about it these ways:

1) Trump is going to enter office with worse approval than any POTUS had entering office and with Hillary out of the picture he won't be able to use her as a distraction from his own failings.

2) Trump has made many big promises that will be impossible for him to fulfill. The Wall is physically impossible. The Muslim ban won't get enough votes to pass the Senate. The Rust Belt jobs won't come back. He backed off jailing Hillary because he knows he would fail.

3) Trump saying something bad as a candidate is one thing, but if he says the wrong thing as POTUS, it becomes a different problem because he won't have the same free-speech rights as a private citizen.

4) The GOP is making the mistake of thinking that they can get away with whatever they want so long as they suppress the opposition's vote, forgetting that some of things they have planned will piss off some of their own voters as well. For example, polls show that 75% of the population does NOT want Obamacare repealed.

5) Other than the Alt-Right, the vast majority of the people that actually LIKE Trump are a dying breed of baby boomers. Trump can't expect this fanbase to keep him afloat, especially since it's unlikely he will be able to energize the rural conservatives like he did this year.

6) If Trump is stupid enough to let his advisors convince to go to war with Iran, he will piss off everyone who sees the parallels between that and the Iraq War.

7) Trump better hope that people like John Kasich don't try to Primary him. Kasich showed in the 2016 primaries that Kasich has a much bigger Ohio GOP fanbase than Trump, so there is no risk to Kasich if he tries to Primary Trump.
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Isaac Otherworld said:
Also we need a better name than "Net Neutrality". People hear that and it immediately puts them to sleep. "Fair internet" or "internet freedom" or something.
Click to expand...

YES. This is something democrats are horrible about doing. Create some folksy/common language name for it and attach "freedom" to it. It's a great idea. Republicans use it to great effect all the time.
 
F

Foffy

Banned
Wilsongt said:
Living in the return to anti-gay America is certainly causing me some harm.

Fuck this man.
Click to expand...


Naomi Schaefer Riley is not only a red flag because she wants to indoctrinate children into religion as more and more seem to be leaving it (because of course she's for this....) but she wrote a very interesting article on how black studies in university are just this apparently unneeded thing. It was so interesting she was fired for it. Funny that.

Of course she'd support such a study. Fuck her.

I have to drown out the stupidity I'm seeing all around me today with some knowledge. I'll share the two videos I've watched today so hopefully anybody down on the dumb can be reminded we still have some reasonable folks among us.

Henry Giroux on 'Zombie Politics' (This is a three year old video, but it's still true today)

Noam Chomsky on Trump and the decline of the American Superpower

Keep your heads held high, friends. We have some awful dickfuckery afoot.
 
B

Box of Kittens

Banned
A Human Becoming said:
I want to believe the policies Trump is pursuing and the people in his cabinet are setting him up for failure and a backlash from voters, but I just don't know anymore. Maybe no matter how bad he does he'll get reelected anyway, like Brownback. Not an apple-to-apple comparison but the last three presidents did get second terms.
Click to expand...

The overwhelming evidence from political science is that voters do respond to performance in office while voting. All three previous presidents were presiding over growing economies.

Kansas is often held up as an example of voters not punishing politicians for poor performance. I think that takes an overly binary view. Consider that in 2010 Brownback won 63.3-32.2% and a 260K vote margin. In 2014, he was reelected 49.8-46.1% and a 32K vote margin. Yes, he was reelected, but he lost a ton of votes in the process, and actually came pretty close to being tossed out during a Republican wave cycle in a deep red state.
 
F

Frank the Great

Banned
Box of Kittens said:
The overwhelming evidence from political science is that voters do respond to performance in office while voting. All three previous presidents were presiding over growing economies.

Kansas is often held up as an example of voters not punishing politicians for poor performance. I think that takes an overly binary view. Consider that in 2010 Brownback won 63.3-32.2% and a 260K vote margin. In 2014, he was reelected 49.8-46.1% and a 32K vote margin. Yes, he was reelected, but he lost a ton of votes in the process, and actually came pretty close to being tossed out during a Republican wave cycle in a deep red state.
Click to expand...

Good point. Trump won by such a tiny margin against a despised candidate. He could easily lose reelection against a more likeable opponent if he doesn't perform. Shit, even if he does perform, most of the country hates him.

I still think there's a good shot he doesn't run again.
 
J

JP_

Banned
Box of Kittens said:
The overwhelming evidence from political science is that voters do respond to performance in office while voting. All three previous presidents were presiding over growing economies.

Kansas is often held up as an example of voters not punishing politicians for poor performance. I think that takes an overly binary view. Consider that in 2010 Brownback won 63.3-32.2% and a 260K vote margin. In 2014, he was reelected 49.8-46.1% and a 32K vote margin. Yes, he was reelected, but he lost a ton of votes in the process, and actually came pretty close to being tossed out during a Republican wave cycle in a deep red state.
Click to expand...

http://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/12/19/14007982/trump-popularity-presidency

There's some political research to suggest it's more about effort/symbolism than actual results. From The Symbolic Uses of Politics:
I would say that any sharp drop in popularity is likely to come from the President's inaction in the face of an important event. Inaction hurts a President more than anything else. A president can take some action, even a wrong one, and not lose his popularity. One of the great mysteries of the political scene last year was why President Kennedy did not suffer a great loss of popularity after the Cuban setback. But he didn't. People tend to judge a man by his goals, by what he's trying to do, and not necessarily by what he accomplishes or by how well he succeeds. People used to tell us over and over again about all the things that Roosevelt did wrong and then they would say, 'I'm all for him, though, because his heart is in the right place; he is trying.'... If people are convinced you are trying to meet problems and that you are aware of their problems and are trying to do something about them, they don't hold you responsible for 100 per cent success. Nor do you have to have any great ideas on how to accomplish the ends.
Click to expand...
 
M

Mobius and pet octopus

Member
You know who has the best job security while Trump is in the white house? His bumbling sputtering defenders on media outlets like CNN. Every day they need to explain often irrational behavior from Trump.

Plinko said:
I, for one, am shocked.
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It's pretty disgusting tbh. Unconstitutional search and seizure essentially. But it's just one more thing to add to the list of disgusting things that happened this election.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
JP_ said:
http://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/12/19/14007982/trump-popularity-presidency

There's some political research to suggest it's more about effort/symbolism than actual results. From The Symbolic Uses of Politics:
Click to expand...

And this was one of Clinton's problems, I think, and I think something Sanders did better (N.B.: not saying this to re-litigate, just as a contrasting example). People want to know what your end-goals are. They want to know what you could do in a world with no obstacles and no limits. Political circumstances change from day to day, and a specific policy enumeration based on today's assumptions might not hold, but if people think they understand your end-game, then they know how you'll react to any situation, and that's important.
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
The country pulled out

all

the

fucking

stops

to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
 
S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
B-Dubs said:
So we got stuck with Trump because of a shitty warrant?




You know what? Fuck this whole thing.
Click to expand...
To be fair Comey made a huge deal out of it BEFORE they even asked for a warrant. The damage was done.

Who knows if denying the warrant on the basis that there was no probable cause would have been "better or worse" for her, but I would argue she loses either way after Comey intervention regardless of what happens after.
 
C

Cesare Borgia

Banned
BreezyLimbo said:
Obama assigning Comey really came back and bit him and us in the ass in the worst way possible.
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The FBI is often run by republican and democrat officials though. Let's not forget Comey is the same guy who told President Bush, the WH counsel and the Chief-Of-Staff to fuck off when they attempted to strong arm John Ashcroft into reversing a DoJ ruling while he was hospitalized/semi incapacitated. He's not some questionable partisan hack who was waiting in the wings for the right time to ruin things for democrats. He's had a less than stellar relationship with republicans for quite some time.
 
H

Hillary Clinton

Banned
You all realize that the Department of Justice has to approve the warrants, right? Is Loretta Lynch also suddenly a hack?

We at the Clinton campaign demanded that the new emails be investigated as quickly as humanly possible so that we could put the issue to rest before the election. That's why the JD rush-approved a warrant that would normally not be approved without more evidence. It was a double-edged sword.
 
H

hydragonwarrior

Member
JP_ said:
Nah, the telecoms will approach it slowly to ease us into it. As they have been doing. Most people won't notice and then we'll look back after it's too late.
Click to expand...

Which is why it's the easiest thing to abolish net neutrality - how do you explain it to the average person? Almost like climate change, they'll only care once it hits them (in this case, the wallet). And again, by then it'll be too late.
 
J

Jooney

Member
benjipwns said:
Respecting the rule of law as established by any declared authority is the most important thing we can do. Especially at a time like this and the next four years at minimum.
Click to expand...

Damn, looks like the same people that got vin diesel in the Fast 8 trailer got benji too.
 
R

RustyNails

Member
It also shows how shitty and low the bar for probable cause is. The courts usually side with cops because "WHAT IF???". You know this guy goes to the same mosque this other terrorist once did 20 years ago but WHAT IF THEY ARE CONNECTED.

4th amendment never saw the daylight.
 
I

ImpracticalPassword

Member
I'm having a fuzz-headed moment. Was the October 20th application for a warrant the same one that was granted on October 30th?

From yesterday's order to unseal the warrant, Pg 4:
On October 20, 2016, Magistrate Judge Fox issued a warrant for the search of information electronically stored on a laptop computer in connection with the reopened investigation into Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email server.
Click to expand...

And Comey hadn't been looped into this investigation yet at this point, right? He informed Congress on October 28th, which was a day after he supposedly was informed of it himself (which was also presumably the same day that Lynch and the DoJ were like, "No, dude, we don't interfere with elections"). So what's interesting about this isn't so much that the warrant was *approved* on flimsy supposition, it's that the original reasoning used to request a search of these emails -- which predates Comey's and higher-level involvement of the DoJ -- was flimsy as hell?

...so Comey might have been able to look at this and think, "Yeah, this is totally fishing" and then decided that he needed to inform Congress and the American public anyway?
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I

ImpracticalPassword

Member
Plinko said:
Good. After what the GOP did in NC, he should be throwing executive orders out like candy.
Click to expand...

Seriously. I'm glad he's doing these things in a way that's hard to undo. No need to play nicely when it's something that most of the electorate won't be alerted to unless they're in the habit of following the news via news outlets themselves (vs. social media).
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Aaron Strife said:
Top it off with Garland before the new Senate is sworn in.

Do it Obama. Do it for America.

People won't give a shit in two years much less four.
Click to expand...

I mean, it absolutely has to be given a thought after the whole NC incident.
 
TheLaughingStock

TheLaughingStock

Member
benjipwns said:
I obviously don't endorse Trump's policies other than to the extent that they are the result of the proper democratic processes that express the will of the people for the benefit of the nation as a whole and thus should be respected and treated as legitimately agreed upon by society.

But isn't Mark Zandi like, absolute shit, at predicting well..anything? Like doesn't he have a decade long track record of being horribly wrong or something?

Him endorsing them as a disaster makes me afraid they'll work.
Click to expand...

I hope for the sake of the GOP and Trump's presidency that he shifts the bias of the proposed tax cuts and reduces the Republican fetish of gutting social services. Republicans could be in power for a very long time if they changed tactics.
 
I

ImpracticalPassword

Member
Aaron Strife said:
Top it off with Garland before the new Senate is sworn in.

Do it Obama. Do it for America.

People won't give a shit in two years much less four.
Click to expand...

Garland is back hearing cases at his old job in January, a few days before inauguration. This is being interpreted as evidence that a recess appointment is not even on the table. :(
 
B

BackLogJoe

Member
Today I ran into a professor from back when I was in college years ago. We talked a bit about each other (he's the dean of his department now) and I finally asked him how difficult it was being an educator in a post Trump time. He told be that he wasn't personally affected by it at school as he teaches upper level classes.

Then he told me something utterly horrific.

One of his English 101 teachers has a paper they assign every semester in which they have to write about someone they admire in history. Since the Trump craziness has started they've had students write about Adolph Hitler.

America, the shit show. It breaks my heart.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
I think it's okay that Obama abides by our institutional norms even when Republicans don't. That's why I never loved this EC plan, despite the fact that it would never work.
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
whyamihere said:
I think it's okay that Obama abides by our institutional norms even when Republicans don't. That's why I never loved this EC plan, despite the fact that it would never work.
Click to expand...

I wish more Democrats had respect for institutional norms. The electoral college for example.
 
M

Mighty Chin

Banned
Zukkoyaki said:
I'm still not convinced he's going to run for re-election. He's already 70 and I get the vibe he's going to haaaate the actual job of being president. Plus he doesn't want to possibly lose. He already won and can go out a surefire winner if he comes in does his term and rides off a "winner."

But wishful thinking is getting ever more difficult.
Click to expand...

My hope is that he will step down after the midterms.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Hillary Clinton said:
You all realize that the Department of Justice has to approve the warrants, right? Is Loretta Lynch also suddenly a hack?

We at the Clinton campaign demanded that the new emails be investigated as quickly as humanly possible so that we could put the issue to rest before the election. That's why the JD rush-approved a warrant that would normally not be approved without more evidence. It was a double-edged sword.
Click to expand...

If you're really Hillary how did you get away with the cattle futures thing
 
I

ImpracticalPassword

Member
BackLogJoe said:
One of his English 101 teachers has a paper they assign every semester in which they have to write about someone they admire in history. Since the Trump craziness has started they've had students write about Adolph Hitler
Click to expand...

This certainly makes me feel slightly better about not getting an academic job. This and the liberal professor watchlist thing...
 
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