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[jtb]

wait I'm sorry I'm not a glen greenwald fan at all but is your position here that russian interference is the reason trump won? or more importantly that if collusion is proven someone other than mike pence would become president?

Hillary Clinton was 70,000 votes away from becoming President.

If she is President, the Greenwald/"Bernie would have won" argument is weakened and the Democratic party is strengthened.

 

[Stinkles]

wait I'm sorry I'm not a glen greenwald fan at all but is your position here that russian interference is the reason trump won? or more importantly that if collusion is proven someone other than mike pence would become president?

Do you think Russian efforts could have changed 70k minds? yes or no.

I don't know but it's hardly an outrageous stretch.

 

[whyamihere]

DailyKos explains the Sinema situation a little better than I could.

AZ-Sen, AZ-09: On Friday, local NBC-affiliate KPNX reported that Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is planning on running for Senate against Republican incumbent Jeff Flake, while Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a fellow Democrat who has reportedly been considering a Senate bid of his own, will instead run to replace Sinema in the House. Neither Sinema nor Stanton has formally declared yet, and Sinema responded only by issuing a statement that she is “seriously considering” running, but that’s still the most direct she has been about her interest in the race.

Sinema would be a top recruit for Democrats in this light-red state, where the party has a relatively thin bench of prominent elected officials for a statewide race, and she has long been seen as one of the likelier potential Democratic contestants against Flake. Sinema’s has already been fundraising like someone thinking about running for Senate, having brought in $633,000 in the second quarter and finishing the month of June with $3.2 million in the bank, which was even more than Flake’s $3 million in cash-on-hand. This hefty fundraising comes even as Sinema won her last race by 61-39 and doesn’t appear vulnerable if she were to seek re-election in 2018.

If Sinema does end up running, it may be because Flake has eviscerated his public standing in the Grand Canyon State by pissing off both swing voters and the far-right element of the party base that has long viewed him with skepticism. As one of the Senate’s relatively hardcore libertarians on fiscal issues, Flake voted for all of the GOP’s recent health care bills, which have been extremely unpopular and would prove especially harmful to states like Arizona that expanded Medicaid. Indeed, one recent PPP poll found Flake’s approval rating at an atrocious 18 percent with 62 percent disapproving, and it showed him losing to a generic Democratic candidate by 47-31.

On the other hand, Flake’s vocal opposition to Trump has landed him in hot water with the party base, which still adores Trump in Arizona. This hostility to the party’s current leader culminated with Flake secretly writing a book where he lambasted the party for making a deal with the devil and abandoning the movement-conservative principles of those like former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater in order to win power with someone unorthodox like Trump. Flake is notably far less hawkish on immigration than Trump, but Arizona Republicans are notorious for favoring harsh anti-immigrant laws. Consequently, that same PPP poll placed Flake’s approval at just 22 percent with 57 disapproving among Republicans.

Flake’s visible apostasies have incurred the ire of many prominent hardliners in the GOP, and he currently faces a primary challenge from former state Sen. Kelli Ward, but Ward has her own flaws and raised just $183,000 in the second quarter. However, she held longtime Sen. John McCain to just a 51-40 win in the 2016 primary, and Flake is much less entrenched than McCain was. Previous reports indicated that Trump himself is keen on finding a challenger to Flake, but some Republicans weren’t sold on Ward. However, billionaire GOP mega-donor Robert Mercer recently dropped $300,000 on a super PAC to support Ward in the primary. The Mercer family spent $700,000 supporting Ward’s 2016 campaign, and their influence with other major donors could open up the doors for even more money.

There’s still about a year to go until Arizona’s 2018 primary, and Flake’s numbers could record somewhat as more time passes since the health care debate. However, he Flake could emerge damaged even if he ultimately wins renomination, and Democrats are certain to attack him over Trumpcare. Sinema’s three-term congressional career has shown her demonstrate remarkable political caution, having evolved from a Green Party-supporter in the 2000 presidential race to maintaining a centrist congressional voting record in likely preparation for an eventual statewide campaign in this Republican-leaning state. Her potential candidacy is a sign that Flake is indeed vulnerable to defeat in what is shaping up to be a Democratic-favoring year nationally.

If Sinema does take the plunge, she would leave behind a suburban Phoenix and Tempe-based 9th District that swung from a narrow 51-47 Obama edge to a wide 55-38 Clinton victory. Having served as mayor of Arizona’s largest city since his initial 2011 election, Greg Stanton would be a strong contender for Democrats and would likely be favored to hold this seat for Team Blue if he ends up running to replace Sinema.

 

[pigeon]

wait I'm sorry I'm not a glen greenwald fan at all but is your position here that russian interference is the reason trump won? or more importantly that if collusion is proven someone other than mike pence would become president?

I do think Russian interference caused Hillary to lose, yes, along with several other factors. It was so close that I don't see how it makes sense to confidently assert that any given factor didn't matter.

To the latter point, I mean, it depends. If the GOP deliberately suborned Trump's collusion, it would seem unjust to let them maintain government control and political victories they got by betraying their oaths to serve and protect America. There's also no obvious way, within the current system, to fix that, though. So that puts us in a quandary, which is pretty normal with constitutional crises.

 

[pigeon]

Wait. I feel like I've entered the twilight zone. Why are there people defending Elon Musk's (possibly false) crazy experiments.
I thought you were all bleeding heart socialists.

Well, not East Lake.

 

[Aaron Strife]

Glad Stanton gets to run for AZ-9 instead.

But moreover, glad that Sinema is doing this. We finally have great candidates in our three best pickup opportunities (NV, AZ and TX, with there obviously being some significant distance between the first two and Texas).

 

[Pyrokai]

All you have to do to know that Russian interference definitely helped elect Donald Trump, is that to listen to this. It's fascinating.

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/08/09/fake-news-bots-are-here

 

[jtb]

I'm sure it's probably a joke but did you guys see the tweet from Matt Iglesias showing he got sent VHS tapes anonymously his morning?

Haven't seen a follow up from him yet.

(It's a joke)

 

[Stinkles]

(It's a joke)

:-( why no laugh

 

[mlclmtckr]

Hillary Clinton was 70,000 votes away from becoming President.

If she is President, the Greenwald/"Bernie would have won" argument is weakened and the Democratic party is strengthened.

Do you think Russian efforts could have changed 70k minds? yes or no.

I don't know but it's hardly an outrageous stretch.

I do think Russian interference caused Hillary to lose, yes, along with several other factors. It was so close that I don't see how it makes sense to confidently assert that any given factor didn't matter.

To the latter point, I mean, it depends. If the GOP deliberately suborned Trump's collusion, it would seem unjust to let them maintain government control and political victories they got by betraying their oaths to serve and protect America. There's also no obvious way, within the current system, to fix that, though. So that puts us in a quandary, which is pretty normal with constitutional crises.

Right, I guess what I should have said is "do you think Trump directly co-operated with Russia in a way that let him win" which I just really do not see. I agree that Putin meddling in the election is one of the many things that you can say put Trump over the edge. But I don't see how that necessarily draws a line to "Trump stole the election."

And, yeah, I don't see any scenario where there is a do-over of the election or where Clinton is somehow installed as POTUS. I really have no confidence whatsoever that that would happen. At most, Trump and everyone else goes to jail and/or gets pardoned and then Orrin Hatch or some other evil Republican shit becomes President.

I don't know, I appreciate that opportunistic Bernie Would Have Won type people don't want the Russia story to be true because it undermines their narrative. But I also think there are a lot of Democrats who are expecting way, way, way too much from this investigation. And as we've seen in other threads thinking "well we actually did everything right but we got robbed" is not an uncommon thought on the part of Clinton-supporting democrats, which is only going to lead to eight years of Trump (or Pence or Orrin Hatch or whoever is left.)

 

[jtb]

:-( why no laugh

(One tape is missing)

 

[Pyrokai]

I think propoganda on Twitter, YouTube, Fox, and elsewhere is going to be very, very difficult to overcome in the next few elections. Probably even harder than 2016. Which gives me not much hope, to be honest......

Dem candidate's slogan should be: "Truth. Not Fiction."

 

[sc0la]

They're fake Christians.

Have you heard the good fake news? Jesus died for all mankind's sins, but he still hates Hillary Clinton.

 

[kirblar]

"Why does everyone think there's collusion when the Trump campaign hired a campaign manager who'd been doing Russia's dirty work in Ukraine for years?"

 

[Wilsongt]

(It's a joke)

🤔

Someone check the bed toilet

 

[B-Dubs]

"Why does everyone think there's collusion when the Trump campaign hired a campaign manager who'd been doing Russia's dirty work in Ukraine for years?"

Other than the fact the Russians set up a meeting that the campaign took in order to figure out how to best collude.

 

[jtb]

The "failed" Clinton/'establishment' strategy also elected Obama twice and got the ACA passed. The party is moving leftward, and that's good. Is the electorate? I see significantly less evidence for that.

 

[mlclmtckr]

"Why does everyone think there's collusion when the Trump campaign hired a campaign manager who'd been doing Russia's dirty work in Ukraine for years?"

Of course Trump is compromised. I believe the piss tape is real ffs.

My not-actually-that-complex point is that there's a difference between being compromised and actually being provably directly assisted by a foreign government. And, more importantly, that even if that collusion can be proven it's not like the result will be anything other than another Republican installed in Trump's place.

 

[pigeon]

And as we've seen in other threads thinking "well we actually did everything right but we got robbed" is not an uncommon thought on the part of Clinton-supporting democrats, which is only going to lead to eight years of Trump (or Pence or Orrin Hatch or whoever is left.)

Eh, I'm not sure I agree with this, but I know what you mean.

The problem is I vastly prefer "we did everything right" to "we talked about racism too much."

On which topic, here are some centrist Democrats actually explicitly making the pitch that we lost because Hillary talked about BLM: http://newdemocracy.net/about/

Our society has fractured along fault lines of race, education and place. The economic fortunes of the best- and least-educated Americans have diverged sharply as we’ve moved into an economy that puts a premium on knowledge and cognitive skills. Citizens in rural areas and small towns increasingly seem to inhabit a different moral universe than city dwellers. Republicans are the worst offenders, but both parties have indulged in a civically corrosive form of identity politics.

To enlarge their appeal, Democrats must work harder to transcend these class and cultural divisions. For many working class and rural voters, the party’s message seems freighted with elite condescension for traditional values (especially faith) and lifestyles. What’s more, these families hear little in the national party’s economic message that seems aimed at their aspirations and struggles. That’s why Democrats should embrace a big national push to drive innovation and jobs to the people and places left behind by economic change.

It’s a mistake, however, to assume that we can reach these voters with economics alone, no matter how much we crank up the populist volume. We also have to avoid vilifying people whose social views aren’t as “progressive” as we think they should be. Listening, reasoning, empathizing and searching for common ground is integral to a new politics of persuasion.

So is putting more emphasis on the “unam” of our national motto, celebrating the shared ideals that unite Americans and help us turn our differences into strengths. On immigration, for example, Democrats should stick to their guns in supporting a humane path to legalization. But we also should take seriously public concerns about the breakdown of public order, the impact of low-skill immigrants on native workers’ jobs and pay, and what many fear is a dilution of our national identity.

Fuck these guys. The Democrats should purge them.

fake edit: Oh, John Delaney is on this. This explains why he declared for President already.

 

[Wilsongt]

The "failed" Clinton/'establishment' strategy also elected Obama twice and got the ACA passed. The party is moving leftward, and that's good. Is the electorate? I see significantly less evidence for that.

The country is moving more left in terms of their acceptance of social inclusion and social support.

However, the GOP has a noose around the country and electorate and keeps drawing it tigher and more tk the right as they do all they can to disinfranchise voters, make voting more difficult and harder to do, and just go ham on trying to make the left look like the bad guy.

And, unfortunately, young folks are too busy doing Instagram nail art and sipping their venti skinny mocha chai teas (with foam) to vote and get active, while baby boomer/evangelicals/blue collar workers flock go the polls and change up the leadership, legislative, and judicial direction for the next 40 years.

 

[whyamihere]

lololol

@FoxNews
Poll: @POTUS leads Congress by 18 points in approval rating.

 

[mlclmtckr]

Fuck these guys. The Democrats should purge them.

fake edit: Oh, John Delaney is on this. This explains why he declared for President already.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmyfuckinggod I've never seen so many words spent to convey an idea as simple as "I am a coward and a racist." Fuck these guys indeed.

 

[Hubbl3]

lololol

Republicans: "We're slightly annoyed that Trump tried to take away our healthcare, but we're beyond pissed that Congress didn't follow through with actually taking our healthcare!"

Edit:Wait, just saw that it's a CNN poll so the 20% is actually probably anger in response to the healthcare debacle and the 38% is Trump's base propping him up

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

lololol

Damn.

 

[VendettaRed07]

If congress is at 20%, then it isn't possible for Trump to go lower than that.

 

[ratcliffja]

lololol

That's good news for 2018 at least. Conversely, it means that Republicans will continue to suck up to Trump even while he blasts them. It makes sense, though. Democrats and a lot of Independents don't like either one for what they're trying to do, but Republicans are mostly upset at Congress rather than Trump. Trump's efforts are mostly stopped by Congress and the courts, while Congress only has themselves to blame for their inability to pass any meaningful laws.

 

[ShOcKwAvE]

Republicans: "We're slightly annoyed that Trump tried to take away our healthcare, but we're beyond pissed that Congress didn't follow through with actually taking our healthcare!"

Edit:Wait, just saw that it's a CNN poll so the 20% is actually probably anger in response to the healthcare debacle and the 38% is Trump's base propping him up

I recall Congress' approval ratings being quite low in the Obama days too, so I'm not sure it's really tied to the Pres.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

lololol

I just saw this at the gym, laughed so hard.

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

lololol

This a great good news/bad news joke lol

 

[whyamihere]

Imagine if Congress was at 1% and Trump was at 20%.

HOLY SHIT, TRUMP IS SURGING OVER CONGRESS IN APPROVAL!

 

[Sciz]

Congressional approval is always in the toilet. Then people go and vote for their incumbent reps again anyway.

 

[whyamihere]

i'm still laughing

 

[kirblar]

Eh, I'm not sure I agree with this, but I know what you mean.

The problem is I vastly prefer "we did everything right" to "we talked about racism too much."

On which topic, here are some centrist Democrats actually explicitly making the pitch that we lost because Hillary talked about BLM: http://newdemocracy.net/about/

Fuck these guys. The Democrats should purge them.

The problem is that "talking about racism" hurt us. I don't think they're wrong on that.

The problem is that rural whites are overrepresented in power in our electoral system, and there's an open question of how do you continue to make progress in a world where merely invoking the words "BLM" is a hair-trigger for a number of those swing voters. (I would disagree w/ the implied conclusion of this group.) "Better Deal" messaging is another take on this, where they're just straight up avoiding it w/ national messaging.

 

[Hubbl3]

I recall Congress' approval ratings being quite low in the Obama days too, so I'm not sure it's really tied to the Pres.

Yeah, I just looked up some Gallup poll numbers for President Obama's terms and at points Congress had shittier numbers than 20%, so you're probably right

 

[Amibguous Cad]

Of course Trump is compromised. I believe the piss tape is real ffs.

My not-actually-that-complex point is that there's a difference between being compromised and actually being provably directly assisted by a foreign government. And, more importantly, that even if that collusion can be proven it's not like the result will be anything other than another Republican installed in Trump's place.

look, we know Russian hacking created a scandal for Clinton that at least arguably swung the election. We know that a week or so before the leaks occurred, top Trump campaign officials met with representatives of the Russian government explicitly to talk about the release of compromising material about Hillary Clinton, as part of the ongoing aid the Russians were giving to the campaign. Then, that conpromising material was leaked.

This is the equivalent of seeing texts on your husband's phone arranging to meet a woman in a hotel room explicitly saying they planned to have an affair. I mean, he can tell you they just talked, and you can't entirely rule it out, but what reason do you have to believe him.

Oh, and Trump himself colluded with the Russians - on live television, with tens of millions of witnesses. He asked the Russians to find and leak Clinton's 30,000 deleted emails during one of the debates.

There can be no reasonable doubt in the minds of any impartial observer that the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with the Russians to undermine American democracy. The only question remaining is whether you can make it stick to Trump.

(Also, Pence in office is waaaay better than Trump - he'd be handling North Korea better, at the very least)

 

[Aaron Strife]

Congressional approval is always in the toilet. Then people go and vote for their incumbent reps again anyway.

Yeah, Congressional approval doesn't mean anything, you could replace everyone in Congress with 435 clones of your favorite politician and it'd still be 20% by the end of the week.

It's a thankless job with zero visibility outside of your own district, a lot of people hate Congress but love their own representative.

 

[Stinkles]

(One tape is missing)

I got the joke. I was too sad to laugh.

 

[benicillin]

Everyone always hates congress but they always think the problem is all the other representatives, not theirs.

 

[tuxfool]

Everyone always hates congress but they always think the problem is all the other representatives, not theirs.

Are you telling me that people lack perspective?

 

[skullmuffins]

Kushner is going back to the Middle East to create peace. If he succeeds he'll fix this pesky Russia PR problem too!

Also I'm super not excited about fucking Roy Moore potentially getting into the Senate. Sure, leave it to Alabama to elect a guy who was removed from his State Supreme Court Justice position because he refused to follow the goddamn Constitution of the United States.

 

[Basileus777]

Eh, I'm not sure I agree with this, but I know what you mean.

The problem is I vastly prefer "we did everything right" to "we talked about racism too much."

On which topic, here are some centrist Democrats actually explicitly making the pitch that we lost because Hillary talked about BLM: http://newdemocracy.net/about/



Fuck these guys. The Democrats should purge them.

fake edit: Oh, John Delaney is on this. This explains why he declared for President already.

BLM probably did help Trump win, but they would have been tied to Democrats (or opposition to them tied to Trump) no matter how much Hillary talked about race.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I'm confused how Black Lives Matter could have been any less offensive or anything.

Most of the major people involved seem pretty personable and not radical. It's fucking nuts.

 

[mlclmtckr]

look, we know Russian hacking created a scandal for Clinton that at least arguably swung the election. We know that a week or so before the leaks occurred, top Trump campaign officials met with representatives of the Russian government explicitly to talk about the release of compromising material about Hillary Clinton, as part of the ongoing aid the Russians were giving to the campaign. Then, that conpromising material was leaked.

This is the equivalent of seeing texts on your husband's phone arranging to meet a woman in a hotel room explicitly saying they planned to have an affair. I mean, he can tell you they just talked, and you can't entirely rule it out, but what reason do you have to believe him.

Oh, and Trump himself colluded with the Russians - on live television, with tens of millions of witnesses. He asked the Russians to find and leak Clinton's 30,000 deleted emails during one of the debates.

There can be no reasonable doubt in the minds of any impartial observer that the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with the Russians to undermine American democracy. The only question remaining is whether you can make it stick to Trump.

(Also, Pence in office is waaaay better than Trump - he'd be handling North Korea better, at the very least)

Doesn't there have to be some kind of specific, provable quid pro quo though? I don't know. I agree with everything you say (except for the specific use of the word treason because it isn't wartime) but I still think it's going to be a longshot to actually convict Trump of something.

As far as Pence vs Trump goes, I think that if we don't actually all die in nuclear hellfire Pence will be worse. Because he wants all the same terrible things Trump wants but also has a deep lifelong passion for torturing gay children and also he's actually not a complete idiot, so he will be more effective at getting horrible things done.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

I'm not sure I want to be part of a Democrat party that pushes away BLM.

I'm confused how Black Lives Matter could have been any less offensive or anything.

Most of the major people involved seem pretty personable and not radical. It's fucking nuts.

It's offensive that innocent black people do not want to be shot by police, obviously.

 

[Kusagari]

I'm confused how Black Lives Matter could have been any less offensive or anything.

Most of the major people involved seem pretty personable and not radical. It's fucking nuts.

A guy taking a knee at a football game is sacrilegious to a good part of the country.

The name alone is enough to offend them.

 

[Blader]

I'm confused how Black Lives Matter could have been any less offensive or anything.

Most of the major people involved seem pretty personable and not radical. It's fucking nuts.

Most, but not all, which is problem 2. Problem 1 is that the group's name makes whites think their lives don't matter (i.e. they read black lives matter as "only black lives matter" rather than "black lives matter, too").

MLK was only like by about 30-40 percent of the country in the 60s. His near-universal popularity happened because he was killed.

 

[kirblar]

It shouldn't be about pushing them away.

After the election, BLM shifted gears entirely away from a protest strategy to one based on local organizing and behind the scenes activism. They did this in part because they no longer had a friendly DoJ, but I would strongly suspect they saw the same backlash issue other people did as well.

This shouldn't be a question of "do we actually bother trying to address this issue" but more "how do we get this done behind the backs of these jerks."

A guy taking a knee at a football game is sacrilegious to a good part of the country.

The name alone is enough to offend them.

"Hillary was talking about race all the time" = "I kept seeing talking heads panels about Colin K" to a non-zero number of people.

My brother got the "You're a Democrat? But you're white!" thing when he moved to the South. The "Dems are the party of black people" association is real.

 

[BoboBrazil]

I think propoganda on Twitter, YouTube, Fox, and elsewhere is going to be very, very difficult to overcome in the next few elections. Probably even harder than 2016. Which gives me not much hope, to be honest......

Dem candidate's slogan should be: "Truth. Not Fiction."

Did you see the news about Sinclair buying more TV stations around the US? They are going to own basically half of local TV stations in the USA. They are forcing the local stations to run segments from Boris Epshtein, a trump subordinate, talking about how great Trump is.

 

[habithipster]

wait I'm sorry I'm not a glen greenwald fan at all but is your position here that russian interference is the reason trump won? or more importantly that if collusion is proven someone other than mike pence would become president?

I feel quite confident Trump would not have won without the Russian interference.

 

[mlclmtckr]

I feel quite confident Trump would not have won without the Russian interference.

I'm not fully confident in that assertion but I get what you are saying and am like 75% sure you're right. But what about the second part?