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Ted Cruz Suspends CampaignFollow

#102 May 12 2016 at 1:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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#103 May 13 2016 at 4:56 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
The lengths you'll contort yourself to defend Trump just because he wears a Republican badge are... well, depressingly familiar, I guess.


And once again, you're making it about me and not about what I wrote. I'm not "defending" Trump at all. I'm making what I feel is an objective assessment of his chances against Clinton in the general election and pointing out what I think are vulnerabilities in the Clinton strategy, and warning against overconfidence in the assumption that Trumps negatives will just swamp him. A heck of a lot of conservatives assumed the same thing about him in the GOP primary, and we were wrong.

It's just struck me when reading all these opinion pieces in Salon, or Slate, or Huff Po, or wherever, that I'm hearing a lot of the same kind of arguments that conservatives were making 9 months ago. The names change, but the basic arguments are the same. His negatives among <this group> are too high. He's too offensive. He's not political enough. He's not savvy. He doesn't have strong policy positions. Etc. Etc. Etc. Heard them all. Didn't make a difference.

This is not at all about what I like or what I want Joph. Continuing to treat it that way is yet another mistake.
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#104 May 13 2016 at 5:11 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
The lengths you'll contort yourself to defend Trump just because he wears a Republican badge are... well, depressingly familiar, I guess.
And once again, you're making it about me and not about what I wrote. I'm not "defending" Trump at all. I'm making what I feel is an objective assessment of his chances against Clinton in the general election...

That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to your defense of Trump's nativism/nationalism and its appeal to GOP voters and trying to pretend that Clinton & Sanders were doing the same thing.
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It's just struck me when reading all these opinion pieces in Salon, or Slate, or Huff Po, or wherever...

I don't regularly read any of those so I'll take your word for it. The few Slate or Salon pieces I've seen linked and read in the last six months have been about how Sanders is the bestest choice to beat Trump ever which doesn't really jive with what you're reading but, again, I'll defer to your Slate/Salon/HuffPo reading experience.

Edited, May 13th 2016 6:12pm by Jophiel
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#105 May 13 2016 at 6:24 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to your defense of Trump's nativism/nationalism and its appeal to GOP voters and trying to pretend that Clinton & Sanders were doing the same thing.


And that's what I'm talking about. At no point did I "defend" Trump. The fact that you keep interpreting what I'm writing in the context of some kind of motivation on my part is the problem. You create a motivation for me, then dismiss what I write because of that motivation. "Oh. You're just defending Trump for <Whatever>. Let's move on...". But what you're missing is the core point I'm making. That trying to dismiss Trump via the same sort of associative labeling isn't going to work. You responded to that by just lumping yet another associative label (nationalist) to him. So basically doubling down on the same mistake I was just pointing out you were making.

Most people aren't going to understand what the term means. They aren't going to know or care what the term means. And of those who do, most will also realize that the term applies just as much to Clinton as to Trump. Actually, arguably moreso. This isn't me "defending" Trump. It's me pointing out that the method of attack you're using isn't likely to be very effective.

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It's just struck me when reading all these opinion pieces in Salon, or Slate, or Huff Po, or wherever...

I don't regularly read any of those so I'll take your word for it. The few Slate or Salon pieces I've seen linked and read in the last six months have been about how Sanders is the bestest choice to beat Trump ever which doesn't really jive with what you're reading but, again, I'll defer to your Slate/Salon/HuffPo reading experience.


The last week or so has been "interesting", in that regard. I've noticed a definite shift in tone. Cruz dropping out marked the clear point at which, barring something really strange and unlikely, it was clear that this was a Clinton/Trump race. And the op-eds reflected that change (as did this very thread, right?). And what I noticed right off the bat was what I viewed as a regurgitation of the same negatives about Trump that conservatives were saying last summer. It's almost like most of the liberal writers were so focused on Sanders vs Clinton (in whichever direction) that they've just been stuck in amber in terms of how they view Trump. They still see him as they did last summer. The guy they really hoped would somehow do well and win the nomination because he'd be the easy guy for Clinton to beat. I honestly don't think they've paid any attention at all to how public opinion has shifted in the meantime.

So yeah, that's at least part of what's been driving my posts on this subject. It just doesn't look like the liberal pundits are taking Trump at all seriously. Which I think is a massive mistake. And when they do make some kind of assessment, they make what I think are the wrong ones. Funny bit of irony, I've been avoiding Bill Maher's show for years now, mainly because it prompts me to yell at the TV far too much, but for some reason I was inspired to tune in last Friday. Right after I'd posted (in the other thread maybe?) about the pattern of mistake that Bush, Rubio, and Cruz all followed (first taking the high road and expecting Trumps offensive nature to bite him and looking weak, then complaining when it didn't and looking like whiners, then finally counter attacking but by then just looking desperate followed by a rapid decline). So there's this guest on, and in the midst of a semi heated debate about Trump (which was amusing since Coulter was on the panel), he was asked what Clinton should to in response to Trump. What did the guy say? "She just needs to take the high road...". I practically face palmed at that.


Look. It's entirely possible that I'm completely wrong about this. Maybe the general electorate really is a whole different animal, and will resoundingly reject Trump and everything he says and does. Maybe, despite the exact same tactic failing horrifically for everyone in the GOP who tried it, Clinton can take the high road and win against Trump. Maybe this time, they'll laugh at him instead of with him. But... I wouldn't bet on it. I just see the same pattern occurring again. And it's not a pretty pattern.
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#106 May 13 2016 at 7:07 PM Rating: Good
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Election's already over, Clinton's already won. In fact, I'm not even going to bother to vote!
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#107 May 13 2016 at 8:12 PM Rating: Decent
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Kavekkk wrote:
Election's already over, Clinton's already won. In fact, I'm not even going to bother to vote!


That's the spirit!
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#108 May 13 2016 at 8:52 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
And that's what I'm talking about. At no point did I "defend" Trump.

Heh. Ok.
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So yeah, that's at least part of what's been driving my posts on this subject. It just doesn't look like the liberal pundits are taking Trump at all seriously. Which I think is a massive mistake.

I don't understand what difference you think it makes whether some dude at Slate is blissfully ignorant about Trump or in a blind panic about Trump. Perhaps you wildly overestimate the impact that Slate has on voters or something.

Edited, May 13th 2016 9:52pm by Jophiel
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Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#109 May 13 2016 at 10:31 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Kavekkk wrote:
Election's already over, Clinton's already won. In fact, I'm not even going to bother to vote!


That's the spirit!


I've actually taken to ironically campaigning for Trump; you know, posting ridiculous pro-Trump messages all over social media, going door to door in a Stars 'n' Stripes suit preaching the good word of Trump, all that. I'm thinking of writing a dissertation on it for my modern performance arts MA.

I'm having a lot of fun with it, to be honest.
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#110 May 13 2016 at 10:58 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
And the op-eds reflected that change (as did this very thread, right?)
No, you were pretty much the only one here who spent the last two months insisting it wasn't going to be Trump/Clinton. The clickbait changed because you can only speculate so long before the facts become absolutely overwhelming and you have to move on to get those page views.
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#111 May 17 2016 at 9:36 AM Rating: Excellent
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Politico did an analysis of early primary voters and found that -- surprise, surprise -- Trump isn't expanding the party and most of the new GOP primary votes came from committed general election Republicans who voted in the primaries for the first time. These weren't new independents or Democrats or whoever that came into the Republican primary process and changed its make-up, these were long-term Republicans.

Gee, I remember saying this once upon a time and being told how wrong I was...

Politico wrote:
While Trump’s insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren’t actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time.
[...]
In Iowa, the Republican caucus turnout smashed its past record by 50 percent this year, jumping from 121,000 to nearly 187,000. But, according to figures provided by the state party, 95 percent of the 2016 caucusgoers had previously voted in at least one of the past four presidential elections—and almost 80 percent had voted in at least three of the past four.

The new caucusgoers, in other words, are likely to vote in November anyway.

In South Carolina, which also saw record turnout, data from the state GOP show that first-time voters amounted to 8.4 percent of the GOP electorate. But triple that amount—roughly 25 percent—were only first-time voters in a Republican primary. Even with historically high turnout, the data from the state party show that the Trump-led ballot brought almost exactly the same number of former Democratic primary voters into this year’s GOP primary as a Trump-free ballot did four years ago.

And in Florida, one of the nation’s most critical battleground states, Republican primary turnout jumped by 40 percent from 2012 to 2016. But only 6 percent of those who voted in the 2016 Republican primary did not vote in either of the 2012 or 2014 general elections and were registered to vote then. That amounts to a lot of people—about 142,000—but it’s a fractional share of a populous and fast-growing state that has added almost 1 million voters to the rolls since the beginning of 2012.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#112 May 17 2016 at 10:04 AM Rating: Excellent
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Obviously the polls are wrong.
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#113 May 17 2016 at 10:18 AM Rating: Good
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Are you suggesting that there wasn't a global liberal conspiracy to vote en masse for Trump?
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#114 May 17 2016 at 10:22 AM Rating: Excellent
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No no, it was still a conspiracy, it was just the Republicans conspiring to vote for other Republicans. They're sneaky like that.
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#115 May 18 2016 at 8:00 AM Rating: Good
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Kavekkk wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Kavekkk wrote:
Election's already over, Clinton's already won. In fact, I'm not even going to bother to vote!


That's the spirit!


I've actually taken to ironically campaigning for Trump; you know, posting ridiculous pro-Trump messages all over social media, going door to door in a Stars 'n' Stripes suit preaching the good word of Trump, all that. I'm thinking of writing a dissertation on it for my modern performance arts MA.

I'm having a lot of fun with it, to be honest.


Yeah, but in the UK campaigning for Trump is a satirical art piece, while doing those kinds of things over here is, well, just campaigning.
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#116 May 18 2016 at 8:39 AM Rating: Good
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Well, there's really no indication that it isn't satirical here as well.
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#117 May 18 2016 at 12:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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The whole thing is like a giant troll attempt that got out of hand, now Trump is just running with it because why not at this point.
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#118 May 18 2016 at 1:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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Nah, Trump had been planning this for years (judging by reports from people who know him). He especially got ready to do it when he was mocked at the 2012 White House Correspondents Dinner for the birth certificate nonsense. So, if anything, it's less of a "troll" and more just a bunch of butthurt that Obama made him look stupid.
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Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#119 May 18 2016 at 1:22 PM Rating: Good
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Made. Reinforced. I guess they could be interchangeable here.
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#120 May 18 2016 at 1:28 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
So, if anything, it's less of a "troll" and more just a bunch of butthurt that Obama made him look stupid.
There Joph goes again, blaming Obama for something that the whole world does on a regular basis.
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#121 May 18 2016 at 1:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
Made. Reinforced. I guess they could be interchangeable here.
Might as well let them take credit. Al Gore made the internet, Obama made President Trump. Both will have played their role in the destruction of humanity.
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