Election 2016

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 2:25 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Ted Cruz: Extra insanity.

You're gonna have to narrow it down. You're only eliminating like a third of the candidates with that description.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 2:29 am

Orion wrote:Huckabee's not a real candidate, he's a scam candidate. He may have been serious the first time he ran, but he's not now.

It is like Poe's Law. I genuinely believe Rand Paul is a sincere racist asshole who thinks he can win or is running on principle, and not someone just running for publicity, but... I wouldn't bet my life savings on that, and he is the candidate I am most sure is not running for the free money/publicity/setting up the speaking deals.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:43 am

Huckabee really does seem to know a lot of child molesters. Like, it's actually ridiculous how many different pedophiles you can get to from him in like one or two degrees of separation. His books were ghost written by a child molester. He played base for Ted Nugent. He campaigned with the Duggars who arranged to have their child molestation buried by a pedophile cop and then sent their child molester son off to be mentored by a child molester cult leader. And then there was that conservative legislator that "rehomed" some adopted girls to a man who raped them. Arkansas conservative politics seems to be very similar to a pedophile ring.

Anyway, running for president among the conservatives right now is indeed a scam. Billionaires give you money and you spend it on hiring your friends and flying around the country eating lobster. And being a former presidential candidate lets you sell books and give speeches for money. You don't even have to write those books, you can get a child molester to do it for you and pocket a bunch of cash.

But Poe's Law really does kick in. These people are claiming to be out of control narcissists who think they should run the free world and be in charge of the big red nuclear devastation button because they are chosen for the task by the creator of the universe. If they actually believed that rather than just engaging in a long con, how could you even tell?

Ben Carson is clearly not going to win, but people are clearly going to keep him very rich as long as he pretends that there is a chance in hell of him doing so. So why would he stop pretending? I don't know if he's even stupid, he is a very skilled neurosurgeon. I mean, he might have early onset dementia and be gibbering crazy talk on podiums because he's completely lost it. Or he might be completely calculatingly saying the stupidest shit he can think of because people pay him tens of thousands of dollars per appearance to stand up and be a black doctor that throws red meat at conservative audiences.

Let's go through some of the others:

Carly Fiorina is a failed CEO and a failed state-level candidate in California. She has no constituency and no accomplishments. There is no way that she can get anywhere in the presidential race. She is running for Vice President. If she gets her name out there enough, she could be 2016's Sara Palin.
Ted Cruz is a member of a real narcissistic cult, so his claims to think he is better than everyone else and also selected by God for greatness are probably true. On an actual policy level, he's basically a cipher because he actually thought the government shutdown was going to work. Where his cynical villainy ends and his rampant Dunning-Kruger begins is basically unknowable.
Jeb Bush is a member of America's evilest and most powerful political dynasty. He is picking up tens of millions of dollars because the richest and evilest people in the country owe favors to his family. He would be a terrible president, but he was able to cheat his own brother into office 15 years ago and a lot pf people fucking owe him. Win or lose, he's going home with eight digits in cash, but he's also a "serious" candidate in that the entire corrupt apparatus his brother put together is on his side.
Chris Christie had a national narrative going where he was a serious candidate because he was a hard charging conservative who won the governorship in a deep blue New Jersey. He had managed to play off rudeness as competence, and was quite personally popular in New Jersey despite having policies that were unpopular. That's over now. The impacts of his failed policies and reports of his corruption and bullying have filtered down to the little people and his career is over. He's still running because he was taken seriously, and he's hoping he can turn it around. And people support him with money because they think that if there's a chance of him returning to national favor that people who supported him when he's low will have disproportionate access and they are probably right.
Rick Perry is basically the same story as Chris Christie. He was the guy who had never lost an election and was governor of the largest state with a mining boom. But then he showed up to major speeches drunk and forgot what federal agencies he would disband in the middle of a nationally publicized debate. He has no real chance, but the fact that he was ever a serious contender means that he gets the media attention and donor dollars needed to run a dark horse candidacy.
Rick Santorum is a failed senator and religious nutjob who is simply unlikeable. In 2012, there was a period when the anti-RMoney conservatives decided to rally around him as a protest candidate, so he came way closer in 2012 than he had any reason to. The fact that he did surprisingly well in the last election means that he gets taken seriously enough for his candidacy to stumble along - even though he only has one supporter and her name is Peggy.
Marco Rubio is relatively young looking, but his actual policies are conservative canards from the sixties. I mean seriously, fight the communists? Is that still a thing? He panders so hard that he actually attends a catholic church and a protestant church on alternate days, so it's not like he isn't willing to lie to Jesus in order to advance his political career.
Donald Trump is an egomaniacal basket case. He has gone bankrupt repeatedly but keeps getting funding for more flamboyant vanity projects because he is a full time grifter and knows how to separate rich investors from their money. His presidential aspirations are obviously just another grift.
Lindsey Graham is probably a closeted homosexual. He's part of McCain's entourage, and the only reason his campaign even exists is because he wants to bomb the Middle East some more. He's not a neo-con like Jeb Bush, he's a violent reactionary, so he's probably looking at more of an "all-in" type invasion of Iran rather than a Cheney style feint attack plus lots of graft that can't possibly work. So way more dead people on both sides, but there'd probably be an actual conquest of Tehran if for some reason that was a thing you wanted.
Pataki has no chance in the modern Republican party, and his candidacy exists because there are a lot of North East rich people who want conservative tax policies but don't want all the know-nothing fascism that conservatism is married to at the moment. There is no electoral constituency for these people, but there is a financial constituency. A lot of people make two hundred thousand dollars a year and want Pataki-style conservatism from their government. I mean, not enough to win elections, but enough to keep Pataki's campaign afloat with cash.
John Kasich is a presidential candidate because he is a conservative governor of a swing state. That's about as far as it goes. He's unlikeable, but Republicans understand that they need to win Ohio in order to win the presidency, so here he is.
Bobby Jindal is the governor of Louisiana, and he is brown. He torpedoed his national profile when he got on national television and said the government should stop monitoring volcanoes. Also the state finances of Louisiana are a travesty, so he can't run on his actual record. He has no chance at all, but various people would like him to stay in the race so that the field can be more diverse. In essence, he's running for vice president like Carly Fiorina. He might be the token minority on the ticket.
Scott Walker didn't even finish college. He has a record of failure and is actually pretty stupid, but he joyfully bends over for the Koch Brothers and has a big war chest. More importantly, he looks like what a Republican thinks a president should look like. And he's the governor of a purple state.

So that's fifteen Republican candidates. And I'm probably missing a few. It's going to be a long year and a half.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:59 am

You forgot Rand Paul.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 8:14 am

...there are a lot of things there that make me go "Wait, what?" And I'd be willing to bet that those are not the results of hyperbole and Frank having a laugh, and are actually results of one candidate talking about volcanoes and another being in a quantum state of Catholicism/Protestantism.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 8:39 am

How do you guys cope with the fact that your vote is basically meaningless if you can even find a candidate you don't feel like complete shit for voting for because the ones you feel like shit voting for have mass stupidity working for them?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:22 am

Yes, Bobby Jindal really did rant about how volcano monitoring was a waste of public money. And Marco Rubio really is a quantum catholic/protestant. Scott Walker really did say that forcing women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds was a "cool thing." Rand Paul said that letting black people eat at segregated lunch counters was government overreach. Jeb Bush said that The Scarlet Letter was a blueprint we could use to base society around. Donald Trump... exists. It's trivially easy to find giant WTFs in all of the Republican candidates. If any of these assholes was a democratic frontrunner instead of a footnote in the Republican clown car, they'd be forced to resign. The reason all these candidates get away with being such weak candidates is that they are all weak candidates. In the last set of polls, no candidate got higher than ten percent.

RelentlessImp wrote:How do you guys cope with the fact that your vote is basically meaningless if you can even find a candidate you don't feel like complete shit for voting for because the ones you feel like shit voting for have mass stupidity working for them?

You don't vote for what you'd like to happen. You vote for the best available option. Back when gay marriage was off the table, we'd vote for allowing civil unions or some fucking thing. In the primary you vote for the best candidate you think can win, and then in the general you vote for the best candidate you think can win.

-Username17

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:43 am

Sometimes I read a post like Frank's breakdown of the Republican candidates and think "no fucking way" and Google a bunch of details. Then I find out yep, it's all true. That is useful information for talking points about those candidates.

Open question to politically minded Denners: since you're so down with US politics, how do you feel about the Democrats? I personally want Sanders to win even though he'd have a harder time against whoever emerges from the Republican primary than Hillary. I like his populism and that he has a clear plan to copy Teddy and fix the infrastructure while making a fuckton of jobs, then make college free via a tax on financial trading, end the drug war, and just do a bunch of awesome shit that I love. Foreign policy seems like the only thing he isn't the tits at, and his "don't go to war, guys" policy is one that I'm fine with in general.

My real question is should I root for Hillary at all? She's not evil and she'd be good at normal presidential duties like not fucking up in disasters and foreign policy (kind of? She was pro Iraq and that makes me a little weary), but I'm not thrilled about her extremely centrist history. I wouldn't be upset if Hillary won because yeah, she'd be good, but why not Sanders who seems like he'd be great no matter what?

O'Malley seems like a Sanders-lite with no real plans and Chafee appears to be just "republican, but not a monster. Also holy shit guys WHY THE FUCK AREN'T WE USING THE METRIC SYSTEM."

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:11 am

I am only concerned with short term and risk adverse concerns. Because I only care about my life, and unlike poor/black/women people, I am well enough off in the current shitty system.

So for me Hillary is the significantly better chance of the world not dying until after me, whereas Sanders is a better chance of the world being actually better. I'd probably prefer Sanders in the general sense that surely no one could actually be stupid enough to vote for whichever stupid republican wins the primary, and Sanders would probably be better for the country.

But I'm not particularly upset about Hillary being president, because the slow death of the country/planet doesn't bother me if it is slow enough.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:40 am

The more republicans that pour out of the party clown car, the more tempted I am to run. Unfortunately, I'm seven years away from being old enough.

...maybe I'll run after Bernie Sanders has his two terms.

Or Hillary, she'd be almost half as good.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:47 am

Obama's signature deliberate achievements were healthcare reform and stopping the world economy from blowing all the way up. On both of those issues, Hillary was better than Obama. Obamacare is just a watered down Hillarycare. And while some of that was treachery by blue dog shit heads (public option), some of it is that Obama had to be convinced of the necessity of some parts (like the individual mandate) by Clinton. If Hillary had been in charge in 2009, we'd have a stronger economy and a better set of healthcare reforms.

Now one thing that I did not expect was that Obama being black normalized the idea of equal rights for gays. If you told me that was going to happen in 2008, I would not have believed you. But the president being black has brought frothing racists out of their holes like it was 1959. The forces of bigotry have dropped their carefully calculated dog whistle talking points a lot - and when they say what they mean, they turn off a lot of "normal" Americans. Because what they really mean is really ugly. Bush 2 won an election in 2004 with coded gay bashing. But bigotry has become so unpopular that a super majority now support FULL citizenship rights for gays. A recent poll showed that people think equal rights for gays is going to be the national standard within a year by 25 points.

So Hillary being a woman is actually worth a lot. We know what Clinton derangement syndrome looks like, and we'll be able to get quite a bit of social progress on the backs of the really ugly and hateful regressive mansplaining that a woman president is going to incite. I don't know what we'll get, maybe a crackdown on cops killing black people or something. But judging by the last 7 years, it's going to be a huge shift in the overton window in some seriously surprising places.

And finally, Hillary today is promising to push for progress on issues that I don't think she is likely to betray us to rich people friends over. I don't think that wall street liberals are going to try to change her mind on voting rights or relaxing the drug war.

So yes, I am excited about Hillary. I'd rather have a socialist, but I will take it.

-Username17

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 7:36 am

I remember thinking that racism in America was a withered, moribund thing until the 2008 election when a bunch of blustering negrophobes suddenly came out of the woodwork to demand birth certificates. I was very naive about racial issues until white America showed me just how pants-shitting terrified it is of black citizens with agency. Even my own extended family sincerely believes without a trace of irony that Obama is an extreme leftist, secret muslim, fascist dictator and radical marxist...even though his voting record in the senate is freely available to the public. Their criticism of Obama, when not comprised of pure paranoid fantasy, is pretty much: "I dunno...I can't quite put my finger on black, but there's some black ablack presiblack Oblacky that I just blackblack".

I wonder if Hilary's campaign will bring out misogynist sleeper cells the way Obama's campaign did for racists. Hell, it's probably already started. I'm afraid to look.

Anyway, I'll gladly vote for Hilary over any nutjob the Republican party is fielding for this election, especially considering that the winner will likely serve two terms and will likely replace 4 supreme court justices. I'd rather have Bernie Sanders personally, but his presence in the primary is dragging the conversation to the left, which I think is just swell even if he doesn't nab the nomination.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:03 am

Hiram McDaniels wrote:I'd rather have Bernie Sanders personally, but his presence in the primary is dragging the conversation to the left, which I think is just swell even if he doesn't nab the nomination.

Well, if he doesn't get nominated, and lives to 2024, that means he can do the same thing again next time!

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:12 pm

I didn't mean to sound too down on Hillary, after all she is better than or equal to Obama on literally every single issue (not that I'm a big fan of executing people via drone without trials and bailing out banks instead of people), I'm just high on Sanders right now. He is a viable candidate who I agree with on (apparently) every single issue.

Fuck yeah, Bernie.

I'm in the same boat as Hiram on racism. It's amazing how many people I discovered (and keep discovering!) are racists thanks to Obama and the police. Hillary could be a neat way to find more sexism, but we already have MRA shitheads doing MRA shithead things and Bernie may be better in policies for women than Hillary. Bernie is into paid parental leave for everyone, Hillary is not.

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:43 pm

Looking at the slate of the clown car...

Is this the year the Republican will finally nominate an actual crazy instead of a pandering plutocrat?

I mean, Bush is the most credible establishment candidate by a wide margin, and he barely tops the list in a fifteen-candidate primary. If all the "I'm with whackjob" voters lined up behind, say, Santorum or Huckabee, they would definitely have the numbers to win the primary.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 6:07 pm

Hiram McDaniels wrote:I remember thinking that racism in America was a withered, moribund thing until the 2008 election when a bunch of blustering negrophobes suddenly came out of the woodwork to demand birth certificates.

It wasn't just the racists it dragged out into the light--though they are all over and now we have 'race realists' trying to cite pseudo-scientific stuff about lactose tolerance as evidence of meangingful inherent attributes determined by skin tone. All kinds of crazy has been very vocal since Obama got elected. The conservative side of politics went, "OH NO! A DEMOCRAT GOT ELECTED! THIS IS GOD'S PUNISHMENT FOR NOT BEING IDEOLOGICALLY PURE! DOUBLE DOWN!"

And that's what got us the 2010 elections and the eventual election of people like Gordon Klingenschmitt. President Obama's initial victory was seen as a result of not being conservative enough, so they whipped the base into a frenzy and that encouraged all kinds of people to open their mouths and now we have serious Republican candidates at all levels of government thinking it's okay to say stuff like "legitimate rape" and suggest that the 1st Amendment protections only apply to Christians because a Supreme Court Justice in the 1830's said so.*

Also since President Obama got elected in 2008, we've really had the emergence of the manosphere. There's some legitimate concerns the MRAs could be about--custody being biased towards the mother by a large amount, shoehorning men into roles, societal distrust of guys**--but the MRAs aren't about those things. Instead they're most vocal about 'manginas' and how refusing to get laid will show those filthy sluts who's boss and how [Insert Woman Here] is evil and either out to enslave men consciously or part of the machinery to enslave men.***

*Really true.

**I've been on the receiving end of it. The past ten years, my extended family has had a lot of kids. I'm not too far from thirty but I'll play with small children because I was a tyke, really big people played with me and I remember that being AWESOME AS HELL. Someone who didn't know I was related to the children in question thought this was 'creepy' and asked other people if it was all right for me to be playing tag or just running around chasing them.

***How's that evil plan to enslave men coming along, Koumei? Going all right?

EDIT:

Also, did Donald Trump somehow forget that President Obama isn't running? He talked waaay too much about Obama.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 6:57 pm

Maxus wrote:Also, did Donald Trump somehow forget that President Obama isn't running? He talked waaay too much about Obama.

People like Trump tend to talk a lot about people they are head-over-heels in love with.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 7:10 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:

There does remain the simple expediant of not living within range of an active volcano.

It's not like they move around.

But yes, it's stupid to slash volcano monitoring, if there are people living in the area. You'll want to force them to move out, first.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 6:39 am

The MRA goons say stupid and horrible things, but the objects of their anger are completely unimportant. Self proclaimed feminist bloggers who said stupid things at some point, lady game developers who also happen to have been shitty girlfriends, these are not people who in the big scheme of things matter. They are broadly speaking on the vagina side, and they did something wrong at some point, and you can get certain basement dwellers to rant about that. But you ain't seen nothing yet.

You got a taste of the crazy when Pelosi was Speaker of the House. Check out some of the Pelosi based conspiracy theories from 2009. Or if you value your sanity, I guess you could just not do that. But if we get an actual person with real lady parts in the White House, you will be absolutely amazed at the level of misogyny and mansplaining that comes out of the mouths of red tribe.

Most people don't know or care who the Speaker of the House is. Nancy Pelosi had real power, but she wasn't in a really high-visibility position for most of America. Everyone in the fucking world knows who the US president is. A female president is going to bring out the crazy like you would not believe. It's going to be awesome.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:09 am

FrankTrollman wrote: A female president is going to bring out the crazy like you would not believe. It's going to be awesome.

Can you do drunk reviews of real life? Because when this happens, it sounds like the kind of thing that needs a drunk review.

Anyway, what exactly is mansplaining? Could one of you men explain/mansplain what it is?

Maxus: given Murdoch, Abbott and Trump are all still things, it appears to not be working. Though the former of those is stepping down from his media-owner role to focus full-time on running Australia.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:22 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:44 am

Shrapnel wrote:
Maxus wrote:Also, did Donald Trump somehow forget that President Obama isn't running? He talked waaay too much about Obama.
People like Trump tend to talk a lot about people they are head-over-heels in love with.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:04 am

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:and Bernie may be better in policies for women than Hillary. Bernie is into paid parental leave for everyone, Hillary is not.

Are you talking about paid parental leave for women (the standard outside the united states) or paid parental leave for everyone (including men)?

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:38 am

Maxus wrote:***How's that evil plan to enslave men coming along, Koumei? Going all right?[/size]

I look forwards to our new boobs overlordsladies.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 2:56 pm

Maxus wrote: Also since President Obama got elected in 2008, we've really had the emergence of the manosphere. There's some legitimate concerns the MRAs could be about--custody being biased towards the mother by a large amount, shoehorning men into roles, societal distrust of guys**--but the MRAs aren't about those things. Instead they're most vocal about 'manginas' and how refusing to get laid will show those filthy sluts who's boss and how [Insert Woman Here] is evil and either out to enslave men consciously or part of the machinery to enslave men.

The very reason that custody battles and welfare benefits disproportionately favor women is the prevailing notion that women are supposed to be the homemakers and men are supposed to be the breadwinners. MRA's believe that this is some feminist conspiracy and evidence that women have all the power (hurpdurp!), while feminists attribute this to antiquated ideas about gender roles. Both sides would like to see this rectified.

On the male side of the gender role issue, we're forced into certain roles because society teaches us that displaying qualities associated with femininity is something to be ashamed of. Guys often wear the "asshole" label with pride; but call him anything that feminizes him like "pussy", "bitch" or "sissy", well them's fightin' words. Because the worst thing a guy can be is feminine, and the only acceptable response is anger and aggression.

Societal distrust of men largely stems from the notion that it's a woman's job to prevent herself from being assaulted because male predators are all faceless monsters in trenchcoats who hang out in dark alleys, rather than someone you would open your front door for. It's not exactly that women are taught to be afraid of men; it's more like they're taught that it's their responsibility to protect themselves and if they happen to be attacked, then they've obviously failed in some way. Hence victim blaming.

So, in actuality, these particular "mens' rights" issues are also feminist issues. Of course, MRA's don't see it that way because they think life is a zero sum game wherein they are in the red if women are treated as people rather than decoration or property.

FrankTrollman wrote: Most people don't know or care who the Speaker of the House is. Nancy Pelosi had real power, but she wasn't in a really high-visibility position for most of America. Everyone in the fucking world knows who the US president is. A female president is going to bring out the crazy like you would not believe. It's going to be awesome.

-Username17

I wish I could chew popcorn and watch idiots bloviate with detached amusement, but instead I worry that we'll be treated to 8 more years of belligerent obstructionism in congress and the senate if Hilary is elected. Then again, I think Hilary is less likely to take that sort of thing lying down.