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PoliGAF 2017 |OT1| From Russia with Love

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Teggy

Member
7c0881eb1c8eab9d8e1aeab9455cda7d.jpg

/dead



Meanwhile, in Kansas...

Kansas governor to veto bipartisan tax hike meant to fix state's budget
 

Nelo Ice

Banned
We'll never have any Democrats in SC elected to congress except for Clyburn, but it's nice to see people motivated. Hopefully it lasts until 2018.

Not that I'm delusional enough to think this would flip a place like South Carolina on its own, but how many more elections would we win if left-leaning voters in red states/districts didn't sit them out because they think it's hopeless? So long as 60% turnout (at best) is the norm, it's a fool's errand to try and gauge the partisan lean of various parts of the country.

Like I said, I don't even think it would change that much, but our current president was elected by what, 20% of the country? Less? It's pathetic.
Going through the article, I'm at least seeing hope in unexpected places. Here's to hoping the Dems can capitalize. Since anyone whose sane is going to go blue.
INDIANA
At the last meeting of the women’s caucus of the Monroe County Democratic Party ― normally a sparsely attended affair ― people spilled out the door onto the street. For the party’s upcoming reorganization meeting, county chairman Mark Fraley said they’re looking for a new venue, because the courthouse room that had always been more than sufficient is now too small. If they can’t find a new room, he said, they’ll put speakers outside the door so the spillover crowd can still hear. Democrats here have seen such an outpouring of new members, they’re on track to raise enough money to hire an executive director for the first time.

“Right after the election, we were just inundated with emails [asking], ‘What can I do?’” said Fraley, 37, who works at Indiana Bloomington University.

Fraley said the county party has restructured and added five deputy chairs and created six new committees. The influx of new people is making the party younger, he said: About two-thirds of them came through Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) campaign, many of them encouraged by his organization Our Revolution to do so.

“If we can maintain 30 percent of this energy, that’s a huge increase in our local Democratic capacity,” he added, arguing that Republican House seats that were 9-point wins in the past could soon become competitive.
 
The white working class is also an identity under the pejorative version of the term identity politics. And pandering to them at the expense of minority voters is just trading one identity politics for another.

Under a more narrow view that it refers to politics aimed at minority and/or marginalised groups that suffer institutional inequalities, then the idea of abandoning "identity politics" does essentially amount to throwing minorities under the bus.

I'm confused about your confusion over the term "identity politics" and why it's problematic to minorities.

I am black gay man. As a long-standing member of the Democratic party, I will not stand for issues that pertain to me as black and gay to be shelved in the name of perceived political expediency.

That's the problem with "identity politics." It's a dogwhistle. A trivialiation of minority issues. Of civil rights issues.

Clarifying my stance on this is harder than I thought it would be. It doesn't help that I'm woefully bad at expressing my thoughts. The best I can do for now is to post a relevant article from New Republic, and bold the parts that basically explain my viewpoint:

What Bernie Sanders Meant to Say About Identity Politics

GRAHAM VYSE said:
He didn't really suggest that Democrats forget about race and gender. Or did he?

The Talking Points Memo headline on Monday morning was guaranteed to raise liberal hackles: ”Sanders Urges Supporters: Ditch Identity Politics And Embrace The Working Class." Soon a dozen nearly identical headlines were screeching from a wide variety of media outlets, picking up on remarks Bernie Sanders had made about the Democratic Party's future on Sunday in Boston. At first blush, they made the Vermont senator's message sound unambiguous. When it came to identity politics, he was telling Democrats to ”move away," ”deemphasize," or just plain ”stop." The man who'd been accused of tone-deafness about gender and race during the Democratic primaries was now, in the wake of the election, downplaying the importance of racial and gender inclusion in the party.

Unless, of course, he wasn't.

The trouble had begun when Sanders—who was promoting his book, Our Revolution—entertained a written question from a woman named Rebecca who said, ”I want to be the second Latina senator in U.S. history. Any tips?"

Sanders began his response, captured on a smartphone camera, with a warning: ”Let me respond to the question in a way that the questioner may not be happy with." And then:

It goes without saying that as we fight to end all forms of discrimination, as we fight to bring more and more women into the political process—Latinas, African-Americans, Native Americans—all of that is enormously important, and count me in as somebody who wants to see that happen.

So far, so good ...

But it is not good enough for somebody to say, ”Hey, I'm a Latina. Vote for me." That is not good enough. I have to know whether that Latina is going to stand up with the working class of this country and is going to take on big-money interests.

And then, after backing up to stress the need for diversity in politics—”We need 50 women in the Senate. We need more African-Americans."—he hammered home his point about ”where there's going to be a division in the Democratic Party":

”It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I'm a woman. Vote for me,'" he said. ”What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry."

Sanders's big finish: ”One of the struggles that you're going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics."

On Twitter, the backlash to Sanders's statements was swift. ”I am so done," wrote Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti. Ms. magazine's digital editor Carmen Rios concluded Sanders wants ”the left at-large to take up the mantle of the white working class—erasing in the process the unique marginalization faced by women and people of color, who more often live in poverty than their white and male counterparts."

This is a valid concern. But when you hear Sanders's comments in full, it's not quite so clear: What did he really mean by ”go beyond identity politics"?

Ever since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the senator has called for refocusing the Democratic Party on outreach to the blue-collar whites who gave the president-elect his narrow victory in the Rust Belt—and went more than two-to-one for Trump nationwide. Appearing on CBS This Morning, Sanders had lamented, ”I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from."

The real problem for Sanders is that his recent calls for courting the white working class have been just as ambiguous—and open to misinterpretation—as his remarks on Sunday night. If ”go beyond identity politics" signals that he believes Democrats should pursue an economic populism that doesn't address the unique challenges faced by women, people of color, LGBTQ Americans, and other marginalized groups—if what he's calling for really is the abandonment of identity politics—then the criticism of Sanders is on-target. It would be further evidence of what the writer Kathleen Geier, herself a Sanders supporter, called ”Bernie's Greatest Weakness" in The Nation earlier this year: ”For all his political virtues, Sanders has had difficulty connecting his message of economic populism to the other major social justice concerns of the modern left, such race, gender, and sexuality."

If, on the other hand, ”go beyond identity politics" is a call for Democrats to layer a big dose of economic populism on top of these social-justice concerns—if Sanders is making a statement about building upon the existing political framework, not tearing it down—then he's being misinterpreted.

The New Republic's Clio Chang endorsed the latter interpretation, writing that ”criticism that diversity on its own does not necessarily translate into lifting up the working class is a fair point and not, as [Talking Points Memo] implies, a condemnation of diversity itself." The Intercept's Lee Fang similarly tweeted that what Sanders opposed wasn't actually ”identity politics" but ”shallow identity-first politics."

That probably is what Sanders really meant. The problem is that he's never fully explained how he sees his populism pairing with identity politics. He needs to clarify that he is in fact talking about all Americans, and make it clear that he understands the distinct challenges faced by various groups. Any leader of the left needs to understand the importance of that, and Sanders has shown in the past that he does. If his aim is to re-energize the Obama coalition and broaden it, rather than returning to the 1990s, when Democrats shaped their message around appealing to white ”Reagan Democrats" and shunted feminist and racial-justice issues aside, then Sanders has something important—rather than just controversial and chiding—to say to the party.


Sanders's office didn't respond to The New Republic's request for an interview Monday. But Democrats need to hear from him. If he's figured out a way to speak to blue-collar whites again, while simultaneously broadening the Democratic Party's economic message for Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, and white Millennials, let's hear it. And when he more fully explains what he meant by ”going beyond" identity politics, we'll also know whether his harshest liberal critics were right all along.

Did that help at all?
 
I'm opposed to it morally, but I really think the next time we take Congress, we should be pushing for federal voter registration as a requirement, if not outright passing a Voting Access Act that sets the bar for states at something like "you must have 90% voter participation or your voting requirements are too severe."

We can win otherwise, for sure, but I think it's absolutely true that we have to burn more resources than the GOP to get the same turnout. If we just jack up the turnout across the board, then we can use whatever resources we were using on turnout and spend it on platform outreach.

So how far in the hole is Kansas right now?

IDK about Kansas, but here in MS, after massive tax breaks for corporations, Gov. Bryant just announced that we'll go broke this year unless we cut another $42 million from the budget. Definitely gonna end up hurting schools; our state legislature is cooking up a new formula to determine the budget for schools, and it's because we haven't actually been funding our schools at the legal level for a decade. So instead of rectifying that, they'll just hide how much they're cutting. Not like it'll affect them; they'll mostly cut from the Delta first.

edit:
Did that help at all?

Sure, and I don't doubt you making this point since you're right here making it. With Sanders, my issues are that he's had over a year to bone up on this subject, and he just plain can't (or won't) do it. If we're talking about him being misinterpreted on a topic that he's apparently been misinterpreted on for over a year, I'm going to move past "Maybe he just said it wrong" to "Maybe he just doesn't care that he said it wrong." The latter is going to make people in these groups feel understandably upset.

I've always said the problem with him on this is that he's got literally no training in this whatsoever. The guy comes from one of the whitest places in the country, with no real metro areas to speak of. Of course he sucks at talking about this; same reason Obama can't really relate to rural Southerners, since he never had to appeal to them. If Sanders had just started his career in a more diverse place, iron would've sharpened iron decades ago and he'd have shaped his language. But he never had to, so he didn't.

I'll be a lot more receptive to this populism push if 2 things happen: 1) it's got to be backed by some actual research and legitimate policy. I'm not voting for a catchphrase. And 2) it's got to come from someone who represents a big-tent area. People like Kander are rising stars (and should be, there's a lot for them to do), but with backgrounds like those, I'd expect worse turnout than Hillary got from minority groups, which essentially means betting that these people can make up for that decrease PLUS her decrease in white rural voters (the latter costing us the White House). We need national candidates to come from diverse areas; regional offices (Senate seats, Gov Mansions, etc...) should try to be more focused on demographics of the state.
 

royalan

Member
Lawd honey child...

It hasn't been long enough since the primaries for me to want to read yet another "What Bernie Meant to Say About ________/This Is What Bernie Really Meant I Swear..." article.

I mean, isn't that just embarrassing at this point? Look to people who can express their own thoughts.
 
Going through the article, I'm at least seeing hope in unexpected places. Here's to hoping the Dems can capitalize. Since anyone whose sane is going to go blue.
His point about 9-point wins becoming competitive is on the mark. We're talking about contests where the winning margin was in the hundreds, even tens.

Even if Democrats maxed out their potential in states like Indiana or South Carolina, they probably wouldn't come close to flipping any chambers, but Christ, even if you hold 40% of the districts that at least gives you a seat at the table in most states. That doesn't mean we can't prioritize, but the goal going into the next round of elections should be to run a warm body in every seat who's willing to run a real race. Give someone for people to rally around even if the odds are slim.
 

Tall4Life

Member
Yeah, I feel like a big component of winning these House races will just to galvanize the liberal voting base. Convince enough of them to vote and the conservatives will be overwhelmed.
 

benjipwns

Banned
if not outright passing a Voting Access Act that sets the bar for states at something like "you must have 90% voter participation or your voting requirements are too severe."
The last time we had higher than 65% voter participation half the population wasn't allowed to vote and a good chunk of the rest was heavily disenfranchised to where only minorities of the population could vote in some states.

And we still never cracked 85%, let alone 90%.

Yeah, I feel like a big component of winning these House races will just to galvanize the liberal voting base. Convince enough of them to vote and the conservatives will be overwhelmed.
Unless you're just running up the score in 20% of the games.
 
Yeah, I feel like a big component of winning these House races will just to galvanize the liberal voting base. Convince enough of them to vote and the conservatives will be overwhelmed.
This is why I hope Ossoff wins the Congressional race - the energy behind winning a Trump district in Georgia would be a nice boost to activists, even if 23 isn't really that less daunting of a number than 24. It would prove however that for the 23 Clinton Republican districts, and those that Trump won by only a smidge, anything is possible.
 
Clarifying my stance on this is harder than I thought it would be. It doesn't help that I'm woefully bad at expressing my thoughts. The best I can do for now is to post a relevant article from New Republic, and bold the parts that basically explain my viewpoint:

What Bernie Sanders Meant to Say About Identity Politics



Did that help at all?

Democratic has for the, for awhile, CAMPAIGNED on economic issues. They aren't exactly left economic populists, but they campaign on economic porosity for many Americans. From raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy, getting money out of politics, to a large infrastructure bill, etc . Perhaps, the Democrats don't do it in such away that Bernie does, which is fine, but you and many others need to understand that Bernie has been out of the Democrat circle for a very long time - he isn't a Dem and never was, he isn't going to see things the same way. The party is filled with minorities and women, people like Bernie really aren't part of the party. They have to cater to the people that is in the party. That doesn't mean that they don't care about working class folks either, because many of them make up the party too, but that also means they have to cater towards different groups. Nationally, it appears to be more balanced, especially since Obama did talk about issues that working and middle class people care about, he wasn't the "social justice warrior" that people give some liberals.

Now we got that part out of the why, another question that needs answered what is exactly is identity politics talking about minority issues that mostly effect minorities? If it is that why does that even concern you? The message was never for you and politicians are savvy enough to know what message to give to different people. Also considering that Democrats do talk about helping the middle class, I don't see the issue about talking about things that effect minority groups or trying to pass legislation that helps them.

Going by your definition:

Civil rights is a legal concept. It is based on outlawing discrimination based on race, sex, etc.

Identity politics is a marketing concept for politicians. It has to do with appealing to people based on race, sex, etc and making promises to those groups.
.


The Democrats of course is for expanding and protecting civil rights, especially of people of different sexual orientation and identities . Though what rhetoric does it become 'identity politics'? If a politician identifies that there should be greater protections for people of different sexual orientation and gender identities, and is part of his/her platform is that playing identity politics?

Also is it identity politics if a politician talking to coal miners and promising to bring back jobs? Is it going to areas dominated by WWC and promising to bring back their jobs, not identity politics?

Because if identity politics is a bad strategy; then Donald Trump won by doing exactly that. Regardless, that definition is so broad, I say EVERY does exactly that and it works in spades.
 

benjipwns

Banned
"Identity politics" is usually meant in a way that the interest groups are taking antagonistic stances by focusing on where they differ rather than on common enemies/issues. Ultimately to all their detriment.

This is what broke up the New Deal Coalition. Things like busing drove a wedge between minority groups and working class whites who had been aligned if imperfectly until roughly 1966. Religion was used to drive a wedge between the lower classes and the academic classes. Vietnam/foreign policy. So on.
 

UberTag

Member
I picked a random simpsons episode to watch and out of all the episodes of 28 seasons... I picked an episode where Springfield bans immigrants.

So to Trump's immigrant ban I say... Simpsons already did it.
You left out the best part. A wall was ordered built to keep the citizens of Ogdenville from immigrating to Springfield and they actually talked the Ogdenvillians into building it for them. So they pulled off the very move that eludes Trump.

15357043.jpg

clip.small.gif
 

Nelo Ice

Banned
His point about 9-point wins becoming competitive is on the mark. We're talking about contests where the winning margin was in the hundreds, even tens.

Even if Democrats maxed out their potential in states like Indiana or South Carolina, they probably wouldn't come close to flipping any chambers, but Christ, even if you hold 40% of the districts that at least gives you a seat at the table in most states. That doesn't mean we can't prioritize, but the goal going into the next round of elections should be to run a warm body in every seat who's willing to run a real race. Give someone for people to rally around even if the odds are slim.
Gah well I guess having any seats at all would be a victory then. I just hope all this activism leads to real results.
 

benjipwns

Banned
You left out the best part. A wall was ordered built to keep the citizens of Ogdenville from immigrating to Springfield and they actually talked the Ogdenvillians into building it for them. So they pulled off the very move that eludes Trump.

15357043.jpg

clip.small.gif
That's a pathetic fence. Trump's fence is going to be much yooger and bigly big league. That's why it's taking so long, they have to translate the blueprints into Spanish.
 
Simpson's episode is from 2009, lol

This had to be around when people who claimed to be private militias and "neighborhood watch" decided they should patrol the Mexico border in their free time, as they were convinced the Feds weren't getting the job done. I vaguely remember some footage of random armed people in pickups driving the border. As they were white, they got away with it. Duh.
 

benjipwns

Banned
Simpson's episode is from 2009, lol

This had to be around when people who claimed to be private militias and "neighborhood watch" decided they should patrol the Mexico border in their free time, as they were convinced the Feds weren't getting the job done. I vaguely remember some footage of random armed people in pickups driving the border. As they were white, they got away with it. Duh.
It's called the Minuteman Project, they still do it, started in 2003 or something. Except they got into a legal fight over the name and it's now like five groups or something.

They're in the Penn and Teller Immigration episode playing soldier in the field. There's some other documentaries featuring them. VICE might have done one?

Oh look, they have a story,
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/what-happened-to-arizonas-minutemen
 
I knew milo was ousted from the CPAC thing and resign/fired from breitbart, but I just read even his book was cancelled.

He is trying to start a new media company though. I guess it's true that cockroaches are hard to kill off.
 

benjipwns

Banned
I'm sticking to my theory that he hadn't actually done any of the book yet and they're using this as an opportunity to bail out first.

His advance for it was $250,000 so I can't imagine what stupidly overpriced payment they had lined up for when he turned it in.

I've seen more than one writer suggest it would have been stupid for them to kill the book this close to release if it was actually ready to be published in the midst of full publicity.

Somebody else is going to get his new book about this whole affair.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I'm sticking to my theory that he hadn't actually done any of the book yet and they're using this as an opportunity to bail out first.

His advance for it was $250,000 so I can't imagine what stupidly overpriced payment they had lined up for when he turned it in.

I've seen more than one writer suggest it would have been stupid for them to kill the book this close to release if it was actually ready to be published in the midst of full publicity.

Somebody else is going to get his new book about this whole affair.

He's been leading Gaters on with a ghost book about them for ages. I'm pretty sure this one was the same thing, a carrot to collect money with.
 

thefro

Member
Howard Dean just endorsed Pete Buttigieg for DNC Chair!
Makes 5 former chairs who have endorsed him (the most anyone else has is one).
Going through the article, I'm at least seeing hope in unexpected places. Here's to hoping the Dems can capitalize. Since anyone whose sane is going to go blue.

Monroe County is Bloomington, IN where Indiana University is. It's super-blue, but nice to see the energy there (and we could flip a House seat if Bloomington turns out like crazy).
 
The thread about crazy Republican townhalls made me check to see when my own Rep is doing something. Apparently it's today. I'm off and I don't have anything better to do, so I think I'm going to go.

I've never been to any of these before. Anyone have any experiences about town halls or similar set ups? Anything I should keep in mind?
 
John HarwoodVerified account‏@JohnJHarwood 2m2 minutes ago
new NBC/Survey Monkey Poll on President Trump's job performance: 43% approve, 54% disapprove
 

Wilsongt

Member
Kiss of death for Ellison?


Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump

One thing I will say about Rep. Keith Ellison, in his fight to lead the DNC, is that he was the one who predicted early that I would win!
7:20 AM · Feb 22, 2017
 
Kiss of death for Ellison?


Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump

One thing I will say about Rep. Keith Ellison, in his fight to lead the DNC, is that he was the one who predicted early that I would win!
7:20 AM · Feb 22, 2017


wouldn't you rather have a chair who knows what the hell is happening as opposed to the people who ran the dnc up to last yeaR?
 
Well Bill Maher, shock surprise, learned absolutely nothing...


Given all that has transpired since Friday's show, how do you feel now about your decision to have Milo Yiannopoulos as a guest, and how those segments transpired?

Well, let's recap. About a week ago, I went on Van Jones's show, and somebody asked me about the booking. I hadn't really gotten into the details of Milo yet. He was just getting on my radar. I said, specifically, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Then we had Milo on, despite the fact that many people said, ”Oh, how dare you give a platform to this man." What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left's propensity for outrage. And by the end of the weekend, by dinnertime Monday, he's dropped as a speaker at CPAC. Then he's dropped by Breitbart, and his book deal falls through. As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. You're welcome.

You think his appearance on ”Real Time" helped lead to his downfall?

That's what I was just saying. And by the way, I wasn't trying to get him removed from society. I'm somebody who, many times, people have tried to make go away. They were successful that one time, for six months in 23 years, because that's how long it was between the two shows [”Real Time" and ”Politically Incorrect," Mr. Maher's previous talk show, which aired on Comedy Central and ABC]. It just rubs me the wrong way when somebody says, ”I don't like what this person is saying — he should go away."

I didn't do anything but I'm gonna say I did because I'm Bill Maher and despite me complaining about how liberals are feeble minded and triggered I can never be wrong and can never be criticized.

Also people telling hate spreaders to go away is just like ABC cancelling Politically Incorrect!

Do you feel that way even about the kinds of things Milo was saying on your show, or in the other platforms he was given?

Can he do damage? I suppose he can. To a degree. Not a great degree, I don't think. Could he offend people? Could he even inspire a borderline person to do something violent? I guess so. But nothing is free in life. People seem to want to live in this world where everything is a win-win. That's not how life works.

Do I think his speech could inspire some folks to be violent? Sure but oh well that's the price I'm willing for their victims to pay.

Could there have been more accountability in your segments with him? For instance, it seemed like he was allowed to grossly understate his role in harassing Leslie Jones on Twitter.

It's not my job to hold him accountable to everything he's ever said or done. I had eight minutes with him, on the show itself. Sorry I don't have time to go over everything everybody else would want to do. We just had time to, sort of, start a discussion of the broad view of who he is. I don't think he frankly knows what he's going to say half the time, or knows what his philosophy is. But to see him as this monster is a little crazy. You know what he is? He's the little impish, bratty kid brother. And the liberals are his older teenager sisters who are having a sleepover and he puts a spider in their sleeping bag so he can watch them scream.

It's not my job to do any research or know who he is or do anything really at all and how dare you say it was.... Also Maher is obsessed with like grade school insults and analogies... He infantalizes Milo to a fucked up degree because it basically just absolves Milo of any responsibility for his words and beliefs.

So how does someone deal with a personality like Milo, who is going much, much further than other guests, saying things that are demonstrably false?

The president says 10 things a day that are provably wrong. If I threw everyone off my show who says things that are provably wrong, I'd never book a conservative and probably half the liberals.

I don't have time to stop liars! I'd never make any money!

When he said that transgender people have a ”psychiatric disorder," do you just move on from that?

Move on? It dominated the entire [online] segment. The other guests attacked him. When I say, ”That's not unreasonable" [to not want to share a bathroom with a transgender person] it's because women have said that to me: ”I want to know," or ”I'm not comfortable with someone in the bathroom, even if they, in their minds, have decided they are a woman." Doesn't that opinion count at all?

But you don't agree that transgender people have a psychiatric disorder.

No, I don't agree with that. But I don't know that much about the situation. If somebody feels like they're a woman, fine, then you're a woman. I'm O.K. with that. If they've studied that, and they say it's not a psychiatric disorder, I'm O.K. with that too. If that's what scientists decided, that it's not any psychological disorder, it's fine with me. I agree.

Won't someone think of the opinions of transphobic bigots too afraid to pee in the same washroom as a trans person. Thank god Liberal Icon Bill Maher is here to stand up for the real little guy.

Also note he says he;s knows fuck all about trans issues but yet had a man on your shows who on of his biggest targets is trans women, something you'd know if you did literally a second of research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/arts/television/bill-maher-milo-yiannopoulos-interview.html

He deflects every criticism given towards him.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Cry more Liberals. Mahers interview was important in escalating his profile which lead to the cpac booking which lead to his life falling apart. Did maher do a good job on the show? No. Is he wrong with some of what he said above? Yes. Is he wrong with everything? No. And you can't just sarcastically paint everything and move on. I actually agree that in the process of exposing milo, milo got to say some things that hurt real people and that sucks. But for too long we "didn't give him a platform" except that he made his own on social media and in his shit infested bullshit zone on breitbart and whatever the ruck. We can't ignore these people. 2016 showed they're real and they don't need the mainstream to acknowledge them. They need the mainstream to actively destroy them. Maher failed there. This "don't give a platform" thing makes no sense to me. They don't need you.

So in summary cry more liberals.
 

Pixieking

Banned
Kev's post reminded me of how, for a long time, Gerry Adams's voice was replaced by an actor's voice on UK TV. The words were the same, but it wasn't the leader of Sinn Fein using his own voice to say them.

It did, like, literally nothing to stop the IRA bombings, and gave Gerry Adams notoriety in the States because he was "the guy who wasn't allowed to use his own voice on UK news". Denial of platform didn't change the ideology of Sinn Fein/IRA, it just gave them something else to be notorious about.
 

Blader

Member
Cry more Liberals. Mahers interview was important in escalating his profile which lead to the cpac booking which lead to his life falling apart.

He was booked at CPAC long before he did Maher's show. He was booked specifically because of the UC Berkeley protests.
 
Which is why I don't understand or like this nonsense about pretending Trump is Voldemort and never speaking his name.

Sometimes giving a platform to someone shows just how big of a fool they are.
 
Poll: More than half think Trump acted unethically or illegally in business conflicts

More than half of voters believe Donald Trump has done something illegal or unethical as he faces potential conflicts of interest by continuing to own his businesses while serving as president, according to a new McClatchy-Marist Poll.

Even more voters – nearly six in 10 – say Trump’s conduct as president makes them feel embarrassed, according to the poll.

Those who think Trump has done something illegal, unethical or embarrassing include large numbers of independent voters.


Only 41 percent of registered voters say they approve of the job Trump is doing as president, compared to 49 percent who disapprove. Those numbers are weaker than other presidents at comparable time in their presidencies, according to national surveys.

Independents approve of the job Trump is doing by 40-51. Not surprisingly, Democrats approve by 11-81 percent. Republicans approve by 85-7 percent.
..

A month into his presidency, 41 percent have a favorable impression of him while 53 percent have an unfavorable impression of him. Again that includes large blocs of independents.

Independents approve by 37-56. Just 12 percent of Democrats approve while 83 percent disapprove. By 87-10, Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing.

Yet voter opinion of Trump has generally risen over the last eight months, from 30 percent in July, 33 percent in September and 31 percent in November. In December, after his decisive electoral college victory over Clinton, his favorable impression spiked to 43 percent.

Forty-one percent of voters say they agree or strongly agree that Trump is honest and trustworthy while 55 percent say they disagree or strongly disagree. Fifty-six percent say Trump is doing more to divide the country while 39 percent say he is uniting it.

Even if they don’t like him, they believe he is fulfilling his campaign promises. Forty-seven percent agree and 24 percent strongly agree he is doing what he pledged. Only 14 percent disagree and 11 percent strongly disagree. Only 4 percent are unsure.

But many think he is doing too much too soon. Fifty-seven percent agree or strongly agree he is acting too fast while 41 percent say he isn’t.

Americans think the country is going in right direction by a rate of 39 to 55. That includes 62 percent of independents. It is the lowest rating for wrong direction since December 2012 after President Barack Obama was re-elected.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I mean I'm only half kidding. The cry more stuff obviously kidding. But we can't do the platform thing. They really don't need us. I'm horrified by what twitter looks like these days. Twitter, Reddit, voat, etc. truly frightening and these people need to be invited into major debates and then not debated but actively mauled by all participants. I think wilmore kinda did that.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
He was booked at CPAC long before he did Maher's show. He was booked specifically because of the UC Berkeley protests.
Yeah I was kidding. Lol. I don't think Cpac cares about who goes on bill maher. But I think the Berkeley thing actually did raise his profile. I was at school when we invited Ahmadinejad to speak. He got his ass beat. The president called him a petty and cruel dictator. Someone needed to do that with milo. Instead he got elevated.
 
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