Election 2016

[Blossom]

Aaaand Trump has a $100m bounty on his head now.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

I marvel at the construction of this analogy:

El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S.

That sure is a paragraph.

[Romosome]

Is there any sort of possibility that Trump could, even unintentionally, act as a compromise trick? Making the ultraconservative stances of the other republican candidates look sane and moderate by skewing so ridiculously away from them?

[Lyrai]

Romosome, stop worrying about Trump.

[MarsDragon]

Remember how you were going to try to chill out and stop working yourself up into a barking frenzy over the news? It's July 2015. Chill.

[Classic]

I'd care about politics more if I believed it would stop state-sponsored, heavily armed litterers from visiting my neighborhood.

[Mongrel]

To be fair, Toronto voted for Rob Ford and I thought our politics were supposed to be more conservative and rational than yours.

So. Um.

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

I marvel at the construction of this analogy:

El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S.

That sure is a paragraph.

Also good: Trump has responded to the Republicans circling their wagons around McCain by complaining that none of them ever came to his defense when people made fun of his hairpiece.

I think this may be the single worst analogy anyone has ever uttered.

The word "sociopath" gets thrown around a lot, but yeah the dude seems straight-up incapable of grasping any perspective that does not pertain directly to his own ego.

Is there any sort of possibility that Trump could, even unintentionally, act as a compromise trick? Making the ultraconservative stances of the other republican candidates look sane and moderate by skewing so ridiculously away from them?

I think the other candidates stand to score a lot of points by vocally distancing themselves from him, though up until now Jeb Bush seems to be the only one to have grasped that.

On the whole, though? I really can't see any possible outcome where Trump does more good than harm for the Republican brand.

That and a buck-fifty will buy you a cup of coffee.

Trump's polling well right now for three reasons:

1) He is one of only two candidates in the race who have near-universal name-recognition;
2) the other one's name is "Bush";
3) likely Republican primary voters have a bias toward saying things that will piss off liberals.


MEANWHILE:

I missed the Sanders rally in Phoenix on Saturday. I am going to be honest: I forgot what day it was, and my 18-year-old self would be very disappointed with me.

But he drew a good crowd (roughly the same number of people as Trump claimed to have gotten the previous weekend, which is roughly three times the number of people Trump actually got the previous weekend). My dad was down there working a pedi-cab, though; he got to meet Sanders, and also said that the people attending the Sanders rally were the best tippers he's ever had.

Prior to the rally there was a Netroots town hall meeting, attended by Sanders, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, and Jose Antonio Vargas, the journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings and then announced in 2011 that he is an undocumented immigrant. It got taken over by Black Lives Matter protesters. The New Times takes the position that the protesters were in the right and O'Malley, Vargas, and Sanders should have done more to engage with them rather than getting defensive; I'm more inclined to think that maybe shouting down politicians who already agree with you is less than entirely productive. But I acknowledge my privilege and I also acknowledge I'm not sure if I'd feel the same way if a Latino advocacy group shouted down a Jeb Bush rally.


And incidentally, on the subject of minorities:

I've seen rather a lot of pieces discussing Sanders's long odds talk about how Clinton's got momentum not just because of her name recognition and her deep pockets but because people are excited about voting for the first female President. Invariably, they mention that Obama managed to beat Clinton because he was also an exciting, first-of-his-group President.

And I'm going, okay, but you guys know Sanders is Jewish, right?

That just seems like a weird oversight. Granted, there are a lot more African-Americans (and, obviously, a lot more women) than Jews in America. But Jewish Americans have a high voter turnout and reliably vote Democratic. And while Jews have never actually been slaves or denied the vote, they haven't exactly had an easy road in American history either.

I kinda suspect that Americans under a certain age are largely Jew-blind, for lack of a better term. I remember reading a piece by Seanbaby ages ago that contained this nugget

A lot of people remember Lieberman from when he tried to get all the video games and TV shows with action taken away from us, and if you eat with him, he's the one that says a prayer every meal for Jesus to take our Rock and Roll away.

and wondering how the fuck anyone could possibly think a guy with a name like Lieberman was a practicing Christian.

I dunno, that's one anecdotal example. Maybe that's nothing to do with it. But obviously we're not getting the same enthusiasm for "possibly the first Jewish President" that we got for "possibly the first black President" or are still getting for "possibly the first female President", and I think it's more than just a question of Sanders being a longshot candidate. It probably bears examining why that's a blind spot.

[Mothra]

I'm seeing the wingnuts straight dumping Cruz and flocking to Trump en masse. They adore him right about now.

[Mongrel]

The thing about Trump is the same as it's been since he declared: He has a snowball's chance in hell of becoming president. But for years the GOP has flirted ever more dangerously with the crazies - it's not inconceivable that this is the year they storm the Republican nomination, or, failing that, that we are about to see a nomination race that will tear the GOP in half.

As for his being a sociopath driven by a massive ego... well, pretty sure anyone who was paying attention knew that one back in the 80's. Considering we're talking about a man who's been a (inter!)national laughingstock for THREE DECADES, whatever fans he's got have got to be pretty wilfully blind.

But I'm not content to dismiss a man just because he has a long track record of saying batshit nonsense. I remember W. Bush in 2000. I remember Rob Ford in 2010. To a functional human being, neither of these men ought to have graduated high school, much less have been allowed anywhere near a legislature. And yet here we are, with ugly things in our rearview mirror. Now, I may rationally think Trump's SO far gone that I use the phrase "snowball's chance" and really mean it, but when you've seen Satan ice skate in front of your house twice, you learn to never take anything for granted.

[Brantly B.]

At this point the disenfranchised will flock to anyone they think will tear down the establishment, even if it's clear that he's only going to do it by becoming the establishment and then tearing himself down.

[Mongrel]

At this point the disenfranchised will flock to anyone they think will tear down the establishment, even if it's clear that he's only going to do it by becoming the establishment and then tearing himself down.

I have a friend who is a hardcore dyed-in-the-wool anarchist and he is rooting for Trump so hard (on the expectation that he will implode everything) that he wants to go out and actually vote.

[Brantly B.]

"Donald Trump: America's Cyanide Pill" would probably be a surprisingly effective campaign slogan.

[Brantly B.]

"The Kevorkian of Capitalism."

[Mongrel]

So according to the National Review, Bernie Sanders is an actual Nazi.

[Joxam]

Can we all agree that the wingnut idea that Trump is a Demecratic plant is just as stupid as the man himself

[Caithness]

Stupid things can still be hilarious.

[Blossom]