Octopus Overlords

Kraken wrote:One man tries to understand Who Are All These Trump Supporters? and writes at length about his conclusions in the New Yorker.

Where is all this anger coming from? It’s viral, and Trump is Typhoid Mary. Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems. You and I approach a castle. One of us has watched only “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the other only “Game of Thrones.” What is the meaning, to the collective “we,” of yon castle? We have no common basis from which to discuss it. You, the other knight, strike me as bafflingly ignorant, a little unmoored. In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. (As a proud knight of LeftLand, I was interested to find that, in RightLand, Vince Foster has still been murdered, Dick Morris is a reliable source, kids are brainwashed “way to the left” by going to college, and Obama may yet be Muslim. I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

YellowKing wrote:

(I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

Yes, yes, yes.

My father-in-law got frustrated today talking politics, and he goes, "Why can't people just understand what would happen if Hillary was elected? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand how it would destroy this country!" (Actual quote). He literally could not comprehend how other people could think differently than him, and it was frustrating him almost to the point of tears.

I don't talk politics around family anymore because there is no more reason, no more logic, no more looking at a data set and discussing different ways of interpreting it. It's just "I'm right, and anybody who doesn't agree with me is a moron."

I think a lot of people fall into this trap because challenging your own belief system might be one of the hardest things on earth to do. When you come out on the other side, however, it's worth all the pain and suffering. You either reinforce what you thought was true, giving you even more conviction. Or some of your old weak beliefs are cast aside for ones that are better.

It's funny how we'll go to ten different websites to look up reviews of a product we want to buy, but we won't do the same to figure out all the angles of a news story or politician.

Kraken wrote:

YellowKing wrote:
I told him to stop getting his hopes up and prepare for eight years of Hillary.

Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

Rip wrote:Now, now children. Respect your elders and do as they say.

Rip wrote:Now, now children. Respect your elders and do as they say.

Chrisoc13 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

YellowKing wrote:
I told him to stop getting his hopes up and prepare for eight years of Hillary.

Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

This is my prediction as well. Unless the GOP nominates another trump in four years.

GreenGoo wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

YellowKing wrote:
I told him to stop getting his hopes up and prepare for eight years of Hillary.

Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

This is my prediction as well. Unless the GOP nominates another trump in four years.

I'll just say that I think this is highly probable as well. If the polls are correct, far too many people are willing to nominate a turnip over Hillary. That's a lot of hate.

YellowKing wrote:I think you "4 years" folks are probably right. I said 8 years more to get a rise out of my stepdad.

One would imagine (though I've been proven wrong many times before) that the Republican party would be very careful about the next batch of candidates. All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

Archinerd wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

YellowKing wrote:
I told him to stop getting his hopes up and prepare for eight years of Hillary.

Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

This is my prediction as well. Unless the GOP nominates another trump in four years.

I'll just say that I think this is highly probable as well. If the polls are correct, far too many people are willing to nominate a turnip over Hillary. That's a lot of hate.

This assumes the GOP still exists as a serious politcal party after this.

YellowKing wrote:All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

msteelers wrote:

YellowKing wrote:All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

Agreed. Recent history suggests GOP primary voters reject the sane candidates and embrace the crazy.

Archinerd wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Chrisoc13 wrote:

Kraken wrote:

YellowKing wrote:
I told him to stop getting his hopes up and prepare for eight years of Hillary.

Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

This is my prediction as well. Unless the GOP nominates another trump in four years.

I'll just say that I think this is highly probable as well. If the polls are correct, far too many people are willing to nominate a turnip over Hillary. That's a lot of hate.

This assumes the GOP still exists as a serious politcal party after this.

msteelers wrote: Agreed. Recent history suggests GOP primary voters reject the sane candidates and embrace the crazy.

Rip wrote:So what you guys are saying is Hillary was the best the Democrats had and she is worse than every Republican candidate except Trump.

That Cruz would have won?

That Christie would have won?

Ben Carson would have won?

Jeff V wrote:

Rip wrote:So what you guys are saying is Hillary was the best the Democrats had and she is worse than every Republican candidate except Trump.

That Cruz would have won?

That Christie would have won?

Ben Carson would have won?

No, she's better than every single Republican candidate put up this year. So is Bernie Sanders and Captain Crunch, for that matter.

It's amazing to think that the people who picked the GOP nominee picked pretty much the only guy who could lose to Hillary. I say this in hindsight because I really had no idea how deep the Hillary hatred ran until this election cycle ran.

Rip wrote:So what you guys are saying is Hillary was the best the Democrats had and she is worse than every Republican candidate except Trump.

That Cruz would have won?

That Christie would have won?

Ben Carson would have won?

Rip wrote:So what you guys are saying is Hillary was the best the Democrats had and she is worse than every Republican candidate except Trump.

That Cruz would have won?

That Christie would have won?

Ben Carson would have won?

hepcat wrote:
You left out the ones that weren't complete loons. Kasich, for example.

Holman wrote:People are forgetting that Clinton's favorable rating were actually very high until the past couple of years. Her approvals 2009-2014 were in the mid-60's, very good for any partisan figure.

The GOP has been pouring it on since 2014 because she was always the one they needed to beat in 2016. Their negative spin spilled over into general media, and it definitely shaped Clinton's reputation going into the campaign.

In partisan terms, the Benghazi hearings weren't a waste of time and money at all: they did exactly what they were intended to do.

Holman wrote:In partisan terms, the Benghazi hearings weren't a waste of time and money at all: they did exactly what they were intended to do.

Smoove_B wrote:

Holman wrote:In partisan terms, the Benghazi hearings weren't a waste of time and money at all: they did exactly what they were intended to do.

Even though she's not going to be charged with anything, the FBI director indicating that it was "extremely careless" isn't exactly a label you'd want going into the actual election. As you've noted, the court of public opinion is likely the real important factor here and now Trump (and the GOP) now has that sound bite and label to utilize as they see fit.

Kraken wrote:Four years. America will relapse into Clinton Fatigue by '20.

YellowKing wrote:I think you "4 years" folks are probably right. I said 8 years more to get a rise out of my stepdad.

One would imagine (though I've been proven wrong many times before) that the Republican party would be very careful about the next batch of candidates. All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

GreenGoo wrote:It's amazing to think that the people who picked the GOP nominee picked pretty much the only guy who could lose to Hillary.

I say this in hindsight because I really had no idea how deep the Hillary hatred ran until this election cycle ran.

Fireball wrote: Hillary Clinton's approval ratings plummet when she runs for office and skyrocket when she's actually serving in office. It'll be interesting to see where she stands in 2020, provided she wins, as expected, in November. She was a controversial Senate candidate in 2000, but won in a walk in 2006.

Fireball wrote:

YellowKing wrote:I think you "4 years" folks are probably right. I said 8 years more to get a rise out of my stepdad.

One would imagine (though I've been proven wrong many times before) that the Republican party would be very careful about the next batch of candidates. All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

Except that the Republican Party has no say regarding who runs for their nomination in 2020. American political parties are very structurally weak. In Europe, a figure like Trump could never have swung in and taken the leadership of a major party. There's nothing stopping Tea Party voters from forcing the GOP to run with a Trump-like figure, or someone equally unelectable like Ted Cruz. Right now, the far right in the country is unwilling to listen to reason and nominate a qualified, reasonable candidate, and they control the GOP nominating process.

On the other side, the far left is becoming similarly restive, but they don't control the Democratic Party the way the fringe of the GOP controls it.

Rip wrote:

Fireball wrote:

YellowKing wrote:I think you "4 years" folks are probably right. I said 8 years more to get a rise out of my stepdad.

One would imagine (though I've been proven wrong many times before) that the Republican party would be very careful about the next batch of candidates. All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

Except that the Republican Party has no say regarding who runs for their nomination in 2020. American political parties are very structurally weak. In Europe, a figure like Trump could never have swung in and taken the leadership of a major party. There's nothing stopping Tea Party voters from forcing the GOP to run with a Trump-like figure, or someone equally unelectable like Ted Cruz. Right now, the far right in the country is unwilling to listen to reason and nominate a qualified, reasonable candidate, and they control the GOP nominating process.

On the other side, the far left is becoming similarly restive, but they don't control the Democratic Party the way the fringe of the GOP controls it.

It isn't the fringe of the party. He won by a landslide with turnout up 62%. While Democrat turnout was down 21%. Just sayin.

Rip wrote:
It isn't the fringe of the party. He won by a landslide with turnout up 62%. While Democrat turnout was down 21%. Just sayin.

Fireball wrote:Hillary Clinton's approval ratings plummet when she runs for office and skyrocket when she's actually serving in office. It'll be interesting to see where she stands in 2020, provided she wins, as expected, in November. She was a controversial Senate candidate in 2000, but won in a walk in 2006.

Ryan to Trump: 'Anti-Semitic images' have no place in campaign