metalslimer
Member
I'm shocked people are shocked that a ton of drinking happens in government.
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PoliGAF 2017 |OT2| Well, maybe McMaster isn't a traitor.
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Followed up by a tweet saying "like hookers, and underage models, and illegal models on tourist visas!"
Edit: Government, like business, is largely a men's club and a social game. The serious policy gets hammered out by a handful of wonks, but most people's job is just to schmooze and fundraise. The latter is problematic, but the former is how shit gets done. Get drunk, become friends, do business.
You know an argument I have no patience for is this idea that healthcare is expensive because of too much government intervention. All governments done is take care of all the old, sick, and poor people leaving the private market with only a relatively healthy and high income population to provide care to. Yet they can't do it at a reasonable cost. Totally the government's fault.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I think getting him out there in the public eye would be a good thing regardless. Right now, he isn't. Having him on the VP stage could be a boost for him--even with a loss. If it takes becoming governor, then fine--by all means. Go for it. He just needs to be out there publicly. Voting rights stuff is great (and why I think he'd be a good VP, because that's going to be a massive issue in 2020), but he needs to be representing the party in some official form.
Emerson
May contain jokes =>
Nobody in politics really understands why healthcare is so expensive and if they do they have no interest in pursuing the actual, difficult solutions.
Our healthcare is so expensive primarily because Americans have the highest expectations in the world and they are often not reasonable. We waste hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on ninety year olds with no hope of recovery whose families can't accept that great grandma is dying.
We also have the unreasonable expectation that nothing bad is ever going to happen and if it does then somebody needs to be sued for it. Even worse, this leads to defensive medicine which costs millions and millions every single year. Tests and practices that are routine here are seen as absolutely absurd in other countries.
We have abuse too. There's a single patient at my ER on Medicaid who racks up over $100k a year on ambulance rides alone. To and from the ER 100+ times a year for something that is not an actual acute medical problem. Not to mention the actual ER bills. Though she's one of the worst I've ever seen, every single hospital has multiple patients like that.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
I agree that it's not a good fit for Kander, and while you start by talking about the marketing appeal only, let's not get close to "Speaker of the House is a useless position." Ryan literally has full control over all legislation. Nothing even gets a vote without his say.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
LOL Spicey
tedrotheredro
Member
This whole press conference is Whataboutism 101
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/8/14848636/hillary-clinton-tv-ads
This news won't shock anyone but Vox actually got some research about this. Hillary's ads related to policy were the lowest of any candidate in the past four elections, Trump's were actually pretty standard in terms of policy ads.
This news won't shock anyone but Vox actually got some research about this. Hillary's ads related to policy were the lowest of any candidate in the past four elections, Trump's were actually pretty standard in terms of policy ads.
No evidence that the CIA stuff was "hacked". Different crime IMO
I don't expect many people outside of the NE would be familiar with Dominican Independence day and RI, but it's a party all around.
I especially loved how he had to qualify that the Podesta leaks were him being negative about Hillary. So long as it's a hack against their enemy, it's all cool.
Brawndo Addict
Banned
That Harvard law article made me realize how nice it must be to have complete freedom from repercussions. Trump can accuse Obama of literally anything without any evidence whatsoever, just lifted straight from Infowars or Brietbart, and it's seen as no better or worse than anything else he does. He's set the bar for himself and Republicans so low it's below the ground; the rules simply don't exist for them anymore. Imagine what's going to happen when the midterms come around and Trump starts disparaging Democrats using his pulpit, or how he will treat his opponent when he runs for re-election.
Meanwhile the media keeps falling over itself trying to figure out whether saying Trump lied about something is too mean and the Democrats are incapable of winning the message war because reality can't compete with fantasy.
Meanwhile the media keeps falling over itself trying to figure out whether saying Trump lied about something is too mean and the Democrats are incapable of winning the message war because reality can't compete with fantasy.
excelsiorlef
Member
It's totally sad how in the end everyone just underestimated how easily it would be in 2017 to not care that the Republican nominee was an even worse Barry Goldwater....
Not absolving Clinton of responsibility but a lot of her mistakes do genuinely seem to come from the belief that like she did with Goldwater folks would turn away in droves from Trump if she just showed how awful he truly was.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I remember the conversations on here about that during the campaign.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
I remember bringing that up, way too many attack ads versus policy.
I hope Robby Mook is unemployed forever.
Yeah. I think she genuinely over-estimated how much people would willingly accept an awful person as POTUS.
whyamihere
Banned
Trump didn't really run any ads though, but yeah. The whole messaging of Hillary's campaign was so bad. We already knew that Trump was garbage.
Yup. Exactly.
There might have even been a shift after the summer. She ran all of those jobs-focused ads during the Olympics. No idea what happened.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Yeah even though I talk about Hillary's failures a lot, this election was still a moral failure of America and I don't want to downplay that.
It seems especially noteworthy when I watched that NYU clip and it had Hillary saying that people could learn about her policies and plans by buying her book. It didn't stick out during the election aside from being a bit cringe but in retrospect it was a fairly tone deaf moment.
Yeah about the only thing the CBO was wrong about is the employer provided insurance market shrinking by any significant amount. They basically nailed the average premium on the exchange by 2017, although they expected them to grow more in the prior years rather than one big spike.
Brawndo Addict
Banned
Eh, let's be honest. I'm not sure voters cared about actual policy this year, and those few that did broke for for Hillary. I don't think "build a wall", "ban muslims", and "get all your old jobs back" counts as actual policy.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
"policy" doesn't have to mean a detailed white paper, muslim bans and tariffs to get your old job and prosperity back from the Mexicans who stole it are definitely policies.
I mean I bet Jeb could wrangle up a detailed white paper about how actually cutting taxes will raise everyone's income levels and restore postwar prosperity and it would still be as shit as "building a wall to keep brown people out will get you your job back."
Brawndo Addict
Banned
I dunno, I mean technically yes, anything you propose can be a policy, but I think Trump was clearly on the side of pathos and not logos. The "it just got 10 feet higher" retort speaks to the general intent and purpose of the idea; it wasn't about doing it so much as what 'it' represented.
There has to be some base level of detail and inherent logic/truth to an argument/idea for it to count as actual policy discourse. Otherwise there's nothing to separate it from straight up emotional arguments like MAGA.
Box of Kittens
Banned
I wouldn't say it was so much that she didn't have policy as she failed to come up with a convincing story or narrative for why people should vote for her. She had a lot of detailed plans to help the working and middle classes but "read this laundry list of what I'm going to do on my website" is not really going to speak to people or inspire them.
Now I don't think it was wrong to attack Trump. She did win the popular vote by a significant amount and made some truly impressive gains in some parts of the country (just not the right ones from an Electoral College standpoint) and this despite all the things we've discussed before (racism, Russian interference, etc.) But in terms of her narrative, it was too much "Trump is terrible" which should have been just one of many themes instead of the central theme.
Now I don't think it was wrong to attack Trump. She did win the popular vote by a significant amount and made some truly impressive gains in some parts of the country (just not the right ones from an Electoral College standpoint) and this despite all the things we've discussed before (racism, Russian interference, etc.) But in terms of her narrative, it was too much "Trump is terrible" which should have been just one of many themes instead of the central theme.
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
It's sad; and I honestly see this as a failure of the voting population.
Why should anyone have to have a "story" behind why they're running other than their qualifications and policies. I'm not looking for a movie to watch.
excelsiorlef
Member
Because we're all mostly idiots who care more about what feels right then what is right.
Box of Kittens
Banned
I mean it's sad that we elect our president using a convoluted system designed to increase the voting power of slaveholders, but at the same time that's the reality we have to live with.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Not a trace of irony, either.
excelsiorlef
Member
The Defense Force for Wikileaks after everything they pulled in the last election is staggeringly disgusting.
What are you implying here?
What are you implying here?
You of all people don't get to throw stones.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
Some people will side with anybody that is against the US when it comes to this stuff.
excelsiorlef
Member
Yep it's why I have a lot of contempt for Glenn Greenwald
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
That would you said applies to literally everyone in this thread - myself included. There's maybe one topic where I could have a meaningful discussion with the people at the head of that field and understand fully the workings of the system, and I did my undergraduate and masters on them in the best universities in the world and work in a related field - and I'm still saying maybe. On the average topic, you and I know nothing of the intricacies of policy or system design. Could you explain to me in detail how different insurance mechanism incentivize different types of private operator to change their behaviours? Or the marginal impact on the employment rates of ethnic minorities of reducing business tax? No. Definitely not.
Instead, we rely on people who we trust to be much better informed than ourselves who we share similar values with, and do what they do because it feels right. You and I just dress that up with more intellectual shenanigans.
Brawndo Addict
Banned
As if there's no appreciable difference between honest intellectual inquiry and outright hostility to the scientific process; par for the course I suppose.
It seems to have backfired on Republicans in the long run, but that's only because Obamacare was actually a pretty good policy. Flawed, but distinctly superior to what came before, and now it's tied to Obama forever.
Dystopian Wannabe-Dictator Limbo
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