I’d never heard of you before today. (Saw a book review at AV Club.) Spent the last hour reading some old stuff. You seem interesting, but have a giant blind spot related to Hillary. You write as if the only possible reason for voting for Johnson/Stein/Trump is because one is a selfish asshole, but voting for Hillary is just an enlightened, and completely self-less act of patriotism by one who only cares about altruistically bettering the universe.
All votes are selfish (or “groupish” according to Jonathan Haidt), intended to help the voter’s “in group” at the expense of the voter’s “out group”. This is how we convince ourselves the election is good vs. evil; we’re really just categorizing “us” vs. “them”.
How did you get so emotionally invested in Hillary? And when it comes to political advice, are you just lacking in self-awareness or is it calculated propaganda?
(If you’re wondering, I’ve voted Republican in every election/primary since I turned 18 in ’83 and Rubio last spring. But I just can’t vote for Trump because of the gaping hole where his character should be. My advice for you is to be careful what you wish for. She is monumentally corrupt and she will do tremendous damage to her party.)
Dude, welcome to the party, but don’t come in here quoting Jon Haidt and expect me to be impressed. I’ve read “The Righteous Mind” too, and as hyperbolic as you try to make me sound, I do genuinely believe that the moral intuition of Trump voters is fucking feeble compared to the moral intuition of Hillary voters, and that’s a statement I can make without commenting on the character of either candidate.
Since we seem to agree on the fact that Trump is a garbage monster, there’s no need to even go there. Instead, let’s talk about Hillary. First, allow me to reframe your assertion that she is monumentally corrupt. No, no. The system is monumentally corrupt, and Hillary is masterful at gaming it. I respect that. I don’t see it as a character flaw, because despite what Fox News would have you believe, Hillary really does have a conscience. She is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive who still manages to get shit done in this grotesque plutocracy of ours.
This isn’t about being enlightened. It’s about recognizing that the next President of the United States will select at least two and likely three Supreme Court Justices, thus adjusting the course of the entire American experiment for the next half century. That is not to be fucked with, and as much as you may be a knee-jerk Clinton hater, you know damn well that pulling the lever for Hillary on November 8th is the only responsible way to ensure that those Justices won’t be misogynistic reactionary corporate goons.
And do you really want Donald Trump playing chess against Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping when the world hits peak oil? Fuck no. That would be the greatest geo-political clusterfuck in the history of human civilization. I want the most brilliant, the most experienced, and the most Machiavellian politician we’ve got heading up the home team in the coming years. We both know that’s Hillary.
Listen, I’m very sorry that these are your circumstances, but it’s your duty as an American to ensure that Trump doesn’t win the Presidency. I’m not asking you to emotionally invest in Hillary. You can hate her breathing guts for all I care, but if you have any love for your country, you’ll still show up at the polls, hold your nose, and take one for the team.
This was almost some Good Will Hunting shit, except then it got more real than just trying to win the attention of a lady in a bar.
That was the first thing I thought too!
Ah, Coke. Thank you for always managing to say what my intuition is telling me, but I struggle to put into words.
“Hillarys so manipulative!”
Ya? Good. Politicians need to be.
I’d rather have a President who wants to see America progress into 2050 than a President who wants to drag America back into 1950.
Hillary gets shit because she’s a woman seeking power. People better get used to it.
Spot on•
Is it just me, or is this person basically saying, “You’re too emotional/irrational, so listen to this man instead”?
I kinda read that too.
Let’s sensor Jessica Sen because she’s spam.
Censor.
And nobody suggested that. So you’re probably ready to self censor.
You’re not spam honey, you’re a fucking nightmare.
You’re not spam honey, you’re a fucking nightmare.
You’re not spam honey, you’re a fucking nightmare.
PS : I think you get the idea. Now send me your credit card details DM @FoxNews
I don’t use Twitter.
Is there an email address?
I love that I make you sound reasonable.
Yeah, you’re my best fucking friend, honey.
Agreed.
republicans read the AV Club? holy shit
Eh I’m not that surprised, the comment section skews very dudebro.
The OP is expressing some of the concern that is seriously motivating the third party and Trump voters. I wish he had been more detailed about what catastrophic results are likely to occur if she wins so that we could analyze the perception gap better. Most of the time when I hear anti-Hillary folks talking I can’t make sense of their point of view and I would really appreciate some mindful commentary about that inner experience.
I agree – I’d like to understand, I really would. I get why my far-left friends dislike Hillary – they’re eternal optimists who think she’s shady. Of course she’s shady, everyone is at that level. You gotta sneak. I’d like to know why everyone else is so (seemingly) surprised by that.
I have this working theory that Hillary isn’t actually “shady.” She compromises to get policies through, and so anyone who lives in a little bubble where only their absolute perfect wishes are granted thinks she’s “sold out.” This behavioral pattern is repeated in the tantrums of Bernie Bros and people who would throw their vote away on 3rd party candidates. Voting third party in this election is like setting up a card table outside olive garden and serving spaghetti-o’s to “send a message” to “big noodle.”
Big noodle. Big noodle. BIG NOODLE. Hilarious.
Big noodle? Only had that in a tin. I’m a poor student and my dad won’t even give me money to buy a beer. And I’ve been working all day in the lab. Sure my assistant is hot, but he really distracts me from my poetry. And everyone knows that poetry is damn important
Big Noodle. I almost spat my coffee out. SO GOOD
I grew up in a really conservative environment, and I always remember people vehemently hating the Clintons. I was pretty young while Clinton was President so I didn’t really know anything for myself, but I was always told that Bill Clinton was the worst thing that had ever happened to our country. That, plus the misogyny related to Hillary being a woman, and I guess here we are?
I think a lot of the hatred coming from conservative evangelical environments originated within the weird ties between capitalism and democracy and Christianity in America. Anything smelling remotely of socialism is automatically Satanic and Communist evil and a sign that the end of the world is coming ever closer. (You just have to ignore how flawed and biased their notions of socialism are.)
I do kind of want to go back and talk to some of the people I grew up with and parse out why exactly they’re so against the things that they’re against. It would be really interesting to do some fieldwork of sorts and try to push people to talk beyond their religious frameworks and see where things go. My somewhat naive perceptions of the people I grew up with were of people only influenced by religion, but as I got older I realized there was a lot more to it.
I second your insight regarding anti-socialism. I’m a vendor at a farmers market and one day the
sausage lady went off about how “Obama and Bill Ayers are part of a communist plot to take over the United States from the inside.” I’m gentle and don’t probe or push her too much because I can’t let politics get in the way of a work relationship. I pushed back when she was shitting on the football players who kneeled for the national anthem though. Another day the pasta man was throwing around the tired, “everybody who doesn’t like this country should get the fuck out” bit and was succesfully neutralized with the question – “where is the line between criticizing your government and your country?” I want understand them (they both support Trump) but I also don’t want to destroy my ability to interact with them. As the election has dragged on I no longer hear them mentioning positive attributes of Donal Trump – only negative ones of Hillary.
My experience in asking people to really parse out what it is that they don’t like about Hillary is that the vehement Trump voters don’t HAVE an answer. It’s actually pretty disappointing.
I actually read this due to curiosity. It didn’t really answer any questions other than that Trump voters believe a lot of lies.
https://kellyquelette.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/why-im-voting-for-donald-trump/
My personal concern with Hillary (even though you guys SHOULD ABSOLUTELY VOTE FOR HER) is that she can have a sort of pragmatism that is self-defeating and not always all that pragmatic – like her attitude to finance that was evident in the leaked speeches to Wall Street. No, Wall Street can’t fix itself – as someone who grew up around the 1%, I can tell you those folks are self-deluded about how society works, very sincerely so. So there’s a sort of technocratic instinct that I see in her and her advisors, although it’s not as strong as Obama’s, and she seems a lot less naive than he is.
At the same time, not sure how much of those speeches were really all that sincere, either. It’s not like she’s her “true self” with Wall Street and lies to the rest of us, that’s incredibly naive.
Spot on last paragraph. Ideally no one would have to placate Wall Street to get elected. But you have to, and she does, and does it well, without being intrinsically connected like pre-GFC Ex Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretaries, for example. I hope one of the first significant legislative priorities of her presidency is expanding Obama’s financial sector regulation. Fingers crossed.
I think it’s incredibly naive to think she cares about you more than she cares about the people giving her millions of dollars. Remember that she never hid any speeches from wall street, she hid her wall street speeches from you. But that’s just what I think.
Ah yes, because those speeches – essentially PR for Wall Street – reveal her true and dark motivations for the world. For someone who is trying to make millions of dollars on politics, that is one weird decision to make – basically reveal her whole plan to Goldman Sachs, since they paid her a quarter of a million dollars. A bit like a cartoon villain. Oddly enough, she has plans to regulate finance and criminalise fraud, and Trump essentially wants to deregulate all of it (and cut top tax rates!). How very, very strange.
No, really. You have no idea how structure, history, cultural expectations, personal connections, instinct and plain stupidity interact to create what we know as politics. For you, bad things happen because people have consciously bad intentions. How terribly idiotic. What a shit moral compass.
ETA: Oh nvm you’re pushing a bunch of debunked right-wing conspiracies below. Why did I even bother.
Ah yes, the ole “this system is extremely complex and more nuanced than your quaint silly notions, you have no idea” response. I’m very curious which outlet made you think you’re so smart.
It’s very simple. Special interests give politicians money for the campaign, politicians reward them later. This is a time-tested theory. Even liberals agree with this, as long as they’re talking about conservatives. It’s very cute that you think just because she has plans she will follow through with them.
I see a lot of favors here!
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00000019
I’ll humor you if you take my links seriously. Where do you get your news and commentary? If you stick to john oliver and the like you might only be exposed to “Stupid Drumpf Voters on the Street” and there’s an illusion in a lot of liberal minds that there are no educated or non-redneck trump voters. So my question to you is have you looked at any anti-hillary or rightwing media and how much have you honestly considered their talking points without referring to some liberal “debunking” article?
To answer the question about what catastrophic results we anticipate, it’s a lot of stuff and we’re not just one person but it includes: repealing the second amendment (an email revealed the plan to create an executive action on a gun control issue), open borders and amnesty (Chris Matthews even admitted the dems want immigrants for more votes and this should be obvious to anybody; new video caught a dem official admitting rampant voter fraud for democrats youtu.be/jUDTcxIqqM0 and if amnesty happens, R’s will be permanently outvoted), and more war since Hillary is the most pro-war candidate according to NYT and Salon. She supported the failed war in Libya, she said “The best way to help Israel is to overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad” which indicates she supported the Syrian war AND she supports the deadly Israeli regime. She also stated that Russian cyber attacks should be treated as any other attack and met with a “military response”. http://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/democrats_this_is_why_you_need_to_fear_hillary_clinton_the_ny_times_is_absolutely_right_shes_a_bigger_hawk_than_the_republicanse/
Perhaps most important to any Anti-Hillary voter is the rampant corruption we’ve already seen from her. There is so much stuff that most people haven’t heard of unless they don’t trust media and do the research themselves. For example let’s look at john oliver’s viral video comparing the trump and hillary scandals. I think we can agree he covers all the bases with trump’s scandals at the time, but the following is a long but incomplete list of hillary scandals that he conveniently left out. I am not saying they are all true, but a supposedly exhaustive video should at least mention these. And they are all available on google.
He did not cover Travelgate or Filegate, he doesn’t mention that both Director Comey and Loretta Lynch have history with the Clintons, he failed to mention that new developments are still coming out such as Clinton’s IT guy Paul Combetta asking reddit how to delete Clinton’s name from email archives, he doesn’t mention who the Clinton Foundation donors are and how the foundation’s expenses dwarfed the actual donations, he ignored the Haiti scandal, he ignored how Rajiv Fernando, a CF donor, was given a high-level job at the International Security Advisory Board with zero experience in the field, he ignored the Pay to Play scandal where we found out that dozens of ambassadors and appointees had to donate huge sums to the CF to get hired (and they sent an email that explicitly mentions “Pay to Play”), he ignored how as Sec of State she gave special access to CF donors, he ignored that her friend David Brock owns 14 Pro-Clinton Super PACs all housed in the same building in an elaborate money laundering scheme, he ignored Correct the Record which pays people to create thousands of fake accounts to subvert internet communities and promote Clinton propaganda, he ignored all of the racist things she’s said over the years, and he completely ignored Wikileaks, DCleaks, and the Soros hacks and her relationship with George Soros.
I love how you put debunking in scare quotes, as if setting the record straight using actual facts was somehow a bad thing. I also love how you think it’s only an illusion that progressives thing Trump voters are stupid, and then you go and prove yet again how right wingers will believe anything they read in a forwarded email that bounces around their paranoid, reactionary echo chamber.
I love how you ignored the entire argument except for the only weak points you can muster a criticism for. I came here in peace trying to develop a mutual understanding with your readers who asked for it, and you are being the worst possible role model, literally teaching them to dismiss an entire argument for the slightest perceived flaw and then closing their eyes. I do infer that you know what you’re doing, that you aren’t nearly as passionate about her as you pretend to be, but you are passionate about things like achieving an unbalanced Supreme Court for leftists and importing as many liberal-voting immigrants as possible to permanently suppress your enemies. And you know that you have a small impressionable audience that can be swayed. That is probably the real reason you have a blind spot and an unreasonable hostility to anyone who disagrees. Echo chamber is a rich accusation coming from you. Half of your submissions are people who seriously ask “tell me what to think”.
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/in-the-democratic-echo-chamber-inconvenient-truths-are-recast-as-putin-plots/
“Permanently suppress your enemies”? What? I wasn’t aware that voting actually silenced people. Mind explaining the logic on that one, chief?
Also it’s imperative to mention that the anti-hillary narrative depends on a biased media, while the pro-hillary narrative depends on perceiving ABC, CNN, and CBS to be unbiased. I have a list of sources to suggest that they are biased.
http://pastebin.com/jBVPB7Ew
If they are biased then that is why nobody has heard of the scandals I posted. That’s also why nobody’s heard of the several emails that show collusion between democrats and media figures. This phenomenon of big media ganging up and forcing public opinion is another reason people are opposing Hillary, the establishment’s chosen candidate.
You do know that everyone is only talking about how corrupt Hillary is? Even the news sites that are supposedly biased in her favor run clickbait articles detailing how she was accused of different things, even though fact-checking those articles always reveals that the corruption charges and character assassination attempts always go back to some unverifiable, anonymous source.
The left and the right both hate Hillary. Stop assuming that she has so much support when someone like me who supports her can’t turn my head without seeing a meme about Hil that mocks her ideas, her record, and her physical appearance. There are so many blatant fabrications and lies about her, and yeah, lots of people profiting from those lies. Mainly the news articles that realized it’s more profitable to keep people fired up about how much they hate things than it is to report on what’s actually going on. I’m not in an echo chamber, is what I’m getting at. All of my defenses of Hillary came from finding the basement source of every claim and scandal against her. I don’t go from one biased article to another…I go to the places where there’s actual print-outs of evidence like the FBI documents, the court transcripts, the leaked emails, the actual debates and interviews where she said something problematic, and the surrounding context of the reason why and when she said it. That’s how this works.
Obviously CNN and the others you listed are biased…they’re for-profit companies. That doesn’t mean you can’t find the baseline evidence that all of their articles are spun off of. And in the cases when you can’t find evidence or sources…you can’t just come to your own conclusions. I think that’s called conjecture? You have to accept that it’s where your knowledge ends and not make bold claims about what the truth is. Conspiracy theories are not your friends. They feed off of those shadowy areas in-between our verified knowledge. Do you really want to base your opinions off of the things you don’t know instead of the things you do know? Seems backwards to me.
By the way, that list you made that starts with “repealing the 2nd amendment” is a great example of actual fabrications.
And it’s not that condescending of a claim to say that the workings of the globalized world and our powerful government ARE a lot for the average citizen to try and understand. I don’t mind saying that. I think it’s naive to assume something else is happening. We have a huge country and our government is a big team of people. That claim reminds me of Trump asking over and over why Clinton didn’t do this and that for the last thirty years and she finally couldn’t help but laugh, exasperated, and say “I’ve been a senator, Donald.” 1/100 people working as a team…even the president is supposed to be just another piece of the machinery rather than some kind of elevated source of control. That’s what everything is based on.
And no one can really explain what they think Crooked Hillary’s end-game is. To get money in the weirdest way possible? From a bunch of like sketchballs? No one considers maybe there’s a sort of diplomacy that they don’t understand since they’re not a major government figure interacting with all of the other world powers and there’s more to it than not accepting money (to your A-rated on CharityWatch non-profit organization which has public audits and tax records) from other countries whose relationship with the U.S is complicated?
Also reminds me of Trump. How he kept crying about how we give away all of our plans to strike cities and how stupid it is and the moderator, who is like….a moderator, not a military official or a politician, had to briefly slow him down by telling him that there are strategic military reasons why they reveal where they are going to strike, like giving civilians the chance to leave the area. That was just like…such a perfect example of someone coming into a situation way bigger than them and thinking their elementary understanding of it is so simple and obvious that everyone who is actually engaging with the problem is an idiot. It’s a childish way to think and act.
And I hate referring to this because I think it’s kind of a logical fallacy, but have you seen all that stuff about W. Bush’s own email scandal? That was like…a billion times worse than Clinton’s (hyperbole) and the Obama administration didn’t try and crucify him for it because there were better things to focus their efforts on. I think it more speaks to, once again, the fact that we really don’t know the diplomacy and communication norms inside Washington. If that wasn’t a big deal in the wake of 9/11 when everything was in such a huge frenzy, doesn’t that suggest to you that everyone besides people in Washington fanning the flames on the Hillary email scandal might be doing it for THEIR personal gain, like tearing down a political opponent, rationalizing their unfounded misogyny against her, or making people buy more papers and click more articles since there’s not one but two crazy criminals in the race to run the country?
Just….try to think critically with your own mind using the raw evidence available to you. If you intake more rhetoric and more rhetoric and more rhetoric, it doesn’t matter if you get rhetoric from both sides of the issue. It’s still ALL slanted.
Disappointed in this analysis of the perception gap. Disappointed by adversarial tone of exchanges. Disappointed with the liberal conservative divide and the lack of attempt (on both sides) to establish common ground. Knee jerk defensive rude language as soon as you’re faced with someone who has different beliefs? Lame. I think there are deeper streams to explore but there’s a game of he said/she said that prevents that dialogue before it begins.
WRKRB…are you talking about what I wrote?
Not you specifically but the whole tone of exchanges with super bad guy. I feel like this election zoomed in on the cultural fault line in the country and I desperately desire for the infighting of the liberal conservative binary to come to a ceasefire so that we can fix build change etc. I didn’t like Hillary but love voting for her when Trump’s the alternative. Environmental and anti-war(/violence) progress are very important to me and I don’t consider that a liberal view and don’t think conservative people are my enemies. Pragmatically I would like us to collectively pursue improvements instead of constantly being dragged down by fights over values. Historically rhetoric against immigrants has led to bad places and I disagree with conservative viewpoints there but if we’re blocked from making progress in one area why does that mean we can’t work on another area where common ground can be found?
Here’s some brain measurements between conservatives and liberals.
https://braindecoder.com/post/politics-neuroscience-1282982492#
As a rule, I don’t trust science articles that so much as allude to the notion of a left-right brain divide. Check out the bio of the guy who wrote this:
“Dylan Goldstein is a science reporting intern at Braindecoder. He studies cognitive neuroscience and finance in the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management at University of Pennsylvania. When it comes to neuroscience, he is particularly interested in the neurological basis of personality and its implications for social interaction. In his free time, Dylan loves binge watching Game of Thrones and exploring new cities.”
Correlation does not imply causation.
I just told this information concisely to a bunch of law professors in Melbourne Uni and they chuckled their way out of the pub. One of them even left me a tip even though I don’t work here.
“You’d better get back to your poetry,” he said. “It’s very important to read about flowers and trees.”
“And birds,” said I.
Assholes.
Thank you.
CQ, you were far too nice to him, but I respect you for trying to build a bridge.
It’s a very old bridge. Coquette is just honouring it.
Thank you so much for explaining this so eloquently. As an Australian I am fucking terrified of what a Trump presidency could do to the world. He literally has no idea what the job actually entails and nuclear war is not out of the question, at all. The way you put it – regarding the system being corrupt, rather than her personally – is so true. We had a female head of state and all of this bullshit painting her as a witch was absolutely horrible to watch. She also passed more legislation than any Prime Minister in decades, so was particularly effective. Bernie Sanders speeches made me cry with joy, but if we can’t have him there is only one option. I only hope your readers listen, because the fate of the world is at stake and as a foreigner I can’t do anything. Thanks for everything you do Coke. You are brilliant.
I to am Aussie, and when Trump first announced his candidacy I thought it was just a really long and convincing April fools joke and then when April the first come and went and all of America didn’t stand up and say it’s cool we gottcha’s I become very concerned.
In my opinion Trump is not only NOT a nice person he also comes across as delusional. While I have no doubt that Hillary probably has issues as well (lets face it, everyone does). At least the rest of the world don’t have to worry about Hillary setting of nukes because she is in a bad mood.
Exactly. It’s like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David is wearing a face mask or something, and it will all come out. Except its real and terrifying.
As she said, stack the Supreme Court with dinosaur monsters with ancient outdated values and no vision and the US is fucked for years. Please vote for the other horse in this two horse race.
Its been a carnival of horrors no doubt – but having to see that tangerine nightmare and his butthole face and his horrible simpering voice for four fucking years is just mind-blowingly frightening. We’re only just recovering from our sociopath leader, who fucked the country in less than a term. Then, we got an even worse one. Democracy blows, but there’s only one person up for the job who can do the job.
If you were going to vote Sanders, do what HE would think was right. Support the party that needs his base to govern, who are actively working with him to develop policy. It is COMPLETELY fucked the way the DNC handled the nomination process, but here we are, so please. A Secretary of State and someone with 30 years of experience in public service vs. a self-interested, bigoted, misogynistic, Vladimir-fawning-over shitshow?!
Please America, we love many of the things imperial culture has brought into our lives, but please shut this dude down in a way he will never recover from. No one has ever deserved it more.
Bernie fought for your rights, and not voting is basically spitting in his face, and that of democracy, which may be inherently deeply flawed, but is the reality of the situation. She is flawed, and has made mistakes … but he is a motherfucking mushroom cloud.
Kissass. Trump is obviously a troll. Obviously.
I’m sure Hilary is used to it but here’s JG reflecting on her Prime Ministerial stint
http://m.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/10/12/julia-gillard-warns-of-almost-daily-rape-threats-for-women-in/
Hillary is going to grab this country by the pussy and make it great again.
Have you seen this? It’s great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUh15js14Pg&feature=youtu.be
I would dance the fuck out of that at Supper Club with just a little extra mixed beat.
It’s kinda catchy, right?
Fuck your tic tacs…. 🙂
At this point I kind of just want to yell at third-party voters for being childish. My hope is that one day the general public will realize that their undiluted vitriol toward Hillary was excessive and ultimately misplaced, but not just because they have to experience the fallout of a Trump presidency. Let’s not be short-sighted about this. Please.
Also, by chance I was in London during the Brexit vote. The tone of the news, the evidence of the polls and the people I spoke with seemed certain that, in the end, reason would prevail. We woke up the next morning to see that Britain voted to leave the EU and Cameron had announced his resignation. This shit is real guys, these things can happen. This presidency could happen.
Exactly! I have too many friends who are brushing it off saying, “There’s just no way it can actually happen!” …but Brexit proved otherwise. The phrase “Anything is possible” applies to heinously absurd, backwards fucked up shit too. So keep your guards up, kids. AND FUCKING VOTE!
Well, let’s be honest. She’s not going to change the status quo as much as Bernie would have. But the hypothetical situation here is that Bernie would have bounced off the congressional atmosphere where Clinton may be at a better angle. We will never know.
“She’s not going to change the status quo as much as Bernie would have.”
That’s a hefty assumption to make…about Bernie Sanders.
Oh right….I’m totally out on a limb given her frequency of speaking engagements with wallstreet versus Bernies.
No, you’re out on a limb for thinking Bernie Sanders was going to bring a “revolution” to American politics.
Let’s assume, for a moment, that Sanders won the Democrat nomination and Trump’s campaign went almost exactly in the same downward spiral as it actually has. Sanders would be on track to winning the election, right? Okay, now let’s say he won the election. So…how many of his campaign promises do you think he would be able to keep on his own?
Here’s what you might have forgotten when you put forth the idea of “Bernie shaking up the status quo”: He would have still had to work inside a system designed to keep that status quo propped up. He would’ve had to work with Congress—possibly a Congress controlled by Republicans in at least one house. (And we’ve seen how well a Republican Congress works with a Democratic President these days.) Sanders’ success or failure as a President would’ve depended on how well he could game the current system, and success in that area still might have yielded little in the way of the “revolutionary” reforms he and his supporters want.
Hillary Clinton may not want to reform the American electoral system, but she sure as hell knows how to game the system—and if at least one house of Congress falls into Democratic control, she’ll be able to game it that much more. And I’ll accept incremental, achievable, tangible goals and changes over some pie-in-the-sky “revolution” that might not even happen.
It’s fun to dream, but eventually, you have to wake up.
@Veryirritable
I voted for Bernie during the primaries and have a great amount of respect for him. However, at this moment in time, I believe it’s important to focus on getting through this election. The primaries are over, we can’t go back.
Our political system is deeply flawed and corrupt but the time to start discussing that again is 25 days from now. It’s painful to be stuck with a candidate you don’t like but at this point it’s ultimately in the best interest of this country to vote for Hillary.
@M
I disagree. I think now is an extremely pertinent moment to reflect on how a broken primary system led to an election between the two least liked candidates of all time. I feel that we’re about to see a significantly depressed voter turnout. People become detached as they become convinced the system is rigged (example: fuckin’ claw machines).
When the talking heads start complaining about voter apathy after the general, I want a strong body of discussion to point to and say “Look! People were passionate as balls this year! But the claw kept dropping their votes, so they threw up their hands and stopped putting in quarters.”
What’s important to remember here is the primary was completely rigged and Hillary rewarded the rigger DWS by hiring her. Given her complete lack of transparency which is supported by every email dump, it isn’t unreasonable to question what else she has rigged or was rigged for her.
If you have any proof that the election for the seat of President of the United States is being rigged, or has been rigged, in favor of Hillary Clinton…yeah, now might be the time to actually present that evidence.
(As for Hillary and the DNC nomination: sure, the party wanted her as the candidate, but if you can prove they rigged all the primaries in favor of Clinton and denied Sanders supporters their legal right to vote for him in the primaries…again, now would be the time to back up that claim with hard evidence.)
Claiming this election is rigged for Hillary does nothing but attempt to delegitimize a possible result of the election (Clinton winning) because you don’t like the candidate/like her opponent more. If Trump wins, I’ll be upset – probably enough to get an ulcer or set off an anuerysm – but I won’t go claiming he rigged the election because I think he’s basically the worst possible thing to ever happen to American politics in my lifetime.
Same thing we do every time this comes up:
1)Vote-trade if it’s still possible. Secure the swing states, boost third parties in safe states.
2)Target Trump supporters instead of Clinton voters/third party voters and try to convince them to change their vote (Johnson in case the person hates the government, Stein or LaRiva in case the person hates neoliberalism).
3)Vote down the ballot too, your vote has much more impact locally.
4)There’s a double digit difference in the polls, and Trump has announced he’s only going to get worse from here on out. While it seems anything is possible, he does a good job at tanking the GOP. Of course he won’t go away after the election and neither will the fashy folks, but this is a historically yuuuggge gap.
Here’s the problem with third-party voting in the national election: Until this country institutes some form of Ranked Voting in favor of the wonky First-Past-The-Post system we have in place now, voting for a third party can lead to a situation where a major party candidate can win an election without having to get a majority of the popular vote.
That means Donald Trump could win the Presidency without having to win a majority of the national electorate. It’s very likely he won’t, but the possibility still exists that he could, especially given the presence of Stein and Johnson in this election. The only sure way to stop him from winning is to vote for Hillary, even in “safe” states.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it as long as things work as they do right now: Third parties need to start local (think city, county, and state) and build up a base that is willing to both vote for their candidates and push for electoral reforms that make it easier for parties that aren’t the Big Two to succeed in politics. Jumping in every four years to try and kickstart a “revolution” isn’t going to work. Real, lasting, positive change takes a lot of time and hard work to pull off; pulling off a “revolution” and tearing down “the system” will only cause chaos.
Third-party voters—and people voting for Trump—would do well to remember that.
“you know damn well that pulling the lever for Hillary on November 8th is the only responsible way to ensure that those Justices won’t be misogynistic reactionary corporate goons.”
I think you’re giving this dude way too much credit, Coke. He said he’s voted republican in every election since ’83 and most recently supported Rubio. Sounds to me like This dude would LOVE for a right-winger to stack the court with misogynistic reactionary corporate goons. He probably would have happily voted for Ted Cruz if he had been the nominee.
News:
Long time Coquette reader Xtina is getting married today at 2PM and she cancelled her Fort Canning photoshoot with dogs and is still asleep now at 8AM in her fancy fuck hotel.
That is relevant to this discussion WHY?
Because I can.
This is a damn good explanation for voting HRC. As much as I personally dislike her, I’ve come to terms with voting for her as the right choice. Thanks as always CQ.
Hillary is a politician and a half. Get over it.
She’s also a brilliant woman who’s read Sun Tzu and The Prince cover, to, cover.
Who do you want leading this damn country? A powerless pussy? Or a queen who knows exactly what she wants for USA and how to get it?
Emails, emails, emails. Get the fuck over it. It’s not like she was an extraordinary porn star while in office. This shit is so fucking human – stop punishing her for it.
Vote.
It’s almost pointless to say anything now. I use all the same arguments Coquette and srsly cannot get through. Just had a discussion with two people who I love. We usually have interesting discussions over our differences and learn from each other but on this topic it goes no where even when we can find points of agreement. One is super religious, the other pretty conservative both identify as feminist. You’d think that would help but it does not. They cannot/willnot understand that the entire system is corrupt and so there can be no wonderful candidate. The first went off on Benghazi and the Bill affairs, the second went the totally corrupt route on Hillary. Both of them insisting that at least Trump wasn’t a politician! Yikes, no, he paid to play and now he wants power. First is simply refusing to vote. The other is writing in a candidate and says he hopes Trump wins because after 4 years of him the peepul will throw everyone out. This last argument is insane to me, how can anyone believe that is going to work. He’s not the only person who says that to me. sigh.
What we need is a modern democratic voting method, we’ll never break out of the two party system and get the candidates we need until we have that. Getting money out of it is important but would be less so if we were not stuck with 2 parties and a media that panders to those parties.
Don’t give up on finding common ground with your friends just yet.
I think where you and your friends differ is a pretty common and fundamental split in American opinion right now, and it’s over what what’s the more unacceptable option in government – corruption or incompetence.
Our electorate has grown so cynical of late that we’re pretty much in agreement the system is rotted through. In really broad strokes, I feel like Hillary voters think the system can’t be fixed but the existing machinery needs to be kept working. To your friends, the machinery probably doesn’t look like it’s working at all.
They probably believe the system has shut out their voices completely and is now drifting irresistibly away from their interests. Basically government looks like a stone wall, and they are willing to take a wrecking ball to it to get through.
Your second friend specifically sounds like someone willing to make government *worse* in the hopes of spreading the sort of resentment he himself feels. He’s lost faith so completely in government he’s willing to ricochet what influence he has off the government and into the people.
I think you should try and see things from their perspective. Imagine what the government would have to do to convince *you* that it was beyond hope of substantial action in the peoples’ interest. Try to draw some parallels between what you end up imagining, and how recent events look from the conservative perspective.
tl;dr: 1) your friends have probably decided corruption is worse than incompetence, 2) their priority is in making a bad deal for current leaders, 3) you have the same aims but disagree on what tools are available, 4) imagine your version of an American government so openly contemptuous of its citizenry’s needs that it’s reasonable to use your vote to strike at it.
I had to give up. My relatives don’t even spout facts. They just spit out weird blends of conspiracy and paranoia. There’s nothing left in them to persuade, they are full of disassociated fear. There are no words that don’t send them into frothing at the mouth convulsions of delusion. FOX has literally hollowed out the people of america and left nothing but a fight or flight reflex. And they did this to people who aren’t actually in pain!
That is too bad to hear. Fox has blurred the line between facts and faith for many people. I take solace in this: As a society, we’re still learning how to sort the barrage of information all our media provides. Maybe it was inevitable these flaws were exposed, meaning they’re just a necessary discovery as we continue to build the new cultural and personal systems needed to deal with the new paradygm. Paradgm. Paradime. Jesus, how do you spell paradyme?
Anyway. I live in hope.
I believe it’s paradiem.
Paradigm – coined by Thomas Kuhn in a great little book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – used to describe the self referential nature of the scientific body of knowledge and the steady buildup of outliers that eventually force it to reorganize itself to accomodate them, i.e. the paradigm shift.
I’ve actually decided that a significant portion of the American electorate isn’t behaving rationally, so there isn’t any point in trying to convince them.
With a 24/7 news cycle built on fear mongering acting as the amygdala of our collective consciousness, we’ve developed a group anxiety disorder. Perception of everything is irrationally skewed to “the worst”.
Agreed, don’t give up. SEE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html
(Seriously, everyone. Do read that.)
I read it when it came out. Pretty awesome really
I am crying. I’m scared. I am so afraid that Trump will win. I am so afraid of the sheer prevalence of stupidity and hatred it takes for someone like him to even be in the race.
I know this is completely irrational – Murphy’s law says that anything that can happen will happen. If not on this planet, it will happen on another. If not in this dimension, it will happen in another. Some way or another, Trump or a guy like Trump will win the race.
I just don’t want it to happen here and now.
I want an intelligent, ruthless person who will kill our enemies and keep our rivals in check in the WH – HRC is my gal.
Kill? Gal? You’re so fucking primitive.
Primitive is when you take over a comment board to satisfy your own sad little insecurities. Go back to your lowly lab job and forget convincing your father to buy you a beer, troll.
You’re a child, my dear.
Lowly lab job? Never take antibiotics or vaccinations again, kid.
Don’t have time to write now, just a note that many states have their voter registration deadlines tomorrow/today, Tues Oct 18.
Among them:
Florida (extended deadline)
Kansas
Maryland
Massachusetts (Oct 19)
Minnesota
Nevada
New Jersey
Oregon
West Virginia
This link includes key deadlines and requirements for all 50 states:
https://www.usvotefoundation.org/vote/state-elections/state-election-dates-deadlines.htm
Some deadlines have passed already, others are coming up after the 18th. (A few allow registration as late as Election Day.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html
I posted this further up, but I’ll post it again down here for visibility: this is a great article about the son of a White Nationalist leader and how he broke away from the hatred and ignorance that he once helped spread.
V E R Y I N T E R E S T I N G !
Interesting content but annoying writing.
Am I supposed to baptize myself after hearing that Lewis Carroll became a Christian?
Am I supposed to be touched by this article?
This election should be about evaluating their policies rather than their personalities/flaws, which they both have in abundance. This election seems to center around a common theme of Globalism vs. Nationalism. Which one should we fear the most? I’m curious on your thouts of Globalism vs Nationalism, Coke.