You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[Dark Jaguar]

"Stay the course" isn't just a poor way of thinking, it stifles any real change in how the party proceeds. What will they actually do different this time, and how will using the same person mean that they actually will do it different, rather than take any new idea and then sculpt and chip at it until it resembles the old way of doing things?

I'm really worried the democratic party doesn't know how to really reach out beyond cities like they'll need to. I want to be proven wrong, but please tell me what changes they are actually going to make. What are their plans? I know it takes time to come up with a whole new plan of action, so I'm not expecting a full dissertation, but they should at least have some broad strokes by now.

[A Black Falcon]

Hillary's popular vote victory margin is now up to 2.7 million votes, a full 2% over Trump. It's insanely unacceptable that that's a losing margin just because of the electoral college... if Trump even won in the electoral college, that is, but I doubt we'll ever actually know that for sure.

But as for Pelosi, again, how would changing House leadership have much of an effect on those things? The House doesn't set policy for the states or state parties, after all. For the challenge of trying to compete nationwide down-ballot, probably the most important position right now is DNC chair, and that race is competitive. It was good to see that one of the two people running, Keith Ellison, will resign his seat in the House if he wins -- we need a DNC chair dedicated to the job, no question about that. I hope that whoever wins focuses on building the party nationwide, it's very important and should be their main job. But as for Pelosi, I just don't see how replacing her makes some major impact. She does a good job at leading the Democratic House delegation, what's the big issue?

Current House (and party) leadership has had eight years to prove, repeatedly, that they are not up to the task of doing well in elections on any level that are either seriously contested or not currently in their control. Why not change House leadership now?

Most of that is because of gerrymandering, not House leadership strategy. As we all know the Republicans have been VERY successful at gerrymandering themselves into a near-permanent majority at both the state (in many states) and federal level, despite losing popular votes on a regular basis.

[Dark Jaguar]

How... how would CHANGING THE LEADERSHIP change anything? Right, got it, so it really doesn't matter if Trump is president then. Listen to yourself! Also, how good a job did she do really? She had the party favor Hillary from the start, which didn't turn out well, and led a party-wide policy of "meeting them halfway" for far too long, which hasn't helped, and she led a party that lost to TRUMP! That election was practically GIFT WRAPPED for the democrats, and they couldn't muster enough love for their own candidate to win THAT. Say what you will about the system being gamed against the dems, but that was true back in the 2008 election and true in the 2012 election too. You can't use that as an excuse. The democratic party was led by someone who thought that Hillary was the candidate people would love enough to defeat Trump, and they were wrong. That's reality. Yes, Hillary does walk away with the popular vote, and yes, the electoral college hasn't been needed since the earliest days of our nation, but Obama STILL WON twice even with those problems in place. Hillary just wasn't charismatic enough to win where she needed to win. Maybe Bernie wouldn't have been either, but we'll never know now, and ultimately the biggest issue is they didn't see it going into the race even though her trustworthiness issues were staring them in the face the whole time.

How would changing who leads the party change how the party is run? That's what we're going with here? It would, if nothing else, at least show a commitment to change. As it stands, could you provide me even the slightest evidence the party is actually going to chance in any significant way? I could accept keeping the same leader if some plan for changing the course of the party was put into place, after all. That would be something, but this, no, this was nothing.

[A Black Falcon]

Also, how good a job did she do really? She had the party favor Hillary from the start, which didn't turn out well, and led a party-wide policy of "meeting them halfway" for far too long, which hasn't helped,

Led a policy? No, that was Obama's policy. Pelosi did go along with it, yes, but the president is the leader of their party, and Obama is always far too willing to give up too much too easily for too little gain, if anything, because of his admirable but flawed idea that the Republicans can still be reasoned with like they used to be in the past. On the other hand, for Pelosi in specific, because the House has fewer ways to slow legislation than the Senate, this issue is much bigger in the Senate than the House; all you need is a majority to pass anything in the House, after all. Still, sure, I'd have liked to see her maybe go in the direction Harry Reid did over the course of the last 6 years, towards taking the Republicans on more directly. She's done some of that, but he's more outpoken for sure in some good ways. (He'll be missed... though at least we held the seat.)

So yeah, sure, in that she did go along with that I disagree with some things Pelosi did, and it's really bad that none of the party's leadership managed to figure out how to get liberals to vote in off-year elections or do anything effective to head off the Republican wave of 2010 that stopped so much progress in its tracks, but when it comes to policy and leadership in the House, which is her main job, she's mostly done a good job. Despite what I said above, I can't think of any major policy or House caucus management issue that are Pelosi's fault (and not Obama's, or what have you) and are bad enough to remove her over, at least not in recent years. If there was a time she was going to leave after a failure, wouldn't it have to be after 2010, when we lost our House majority and so much more? That's something she's much more responsible for than Presidential races.

As for this year, at least we did gain a few seats, but House and Senate races have become MUCH more closely tied to their states' presidential races than they ever were before -- note how for maybe the first time ever, every single Senate race this year went to the same party as the Presidential races in those states went. The Democratic turnout effort was mostly decent this year, but could not make up for the large numbers of Trump voters who probably hadn't voted recently and such. For instance, here in Maine, all year the focus was on district 2 (the northern, more conservative district) because the party knew it'd be a hard race, but despite that Trump and the Republican congressman won. I don't know if there's much more the Dems could have done up there...

. Say what you will about the system being gamed against the dems, but that was true back in the 2008 election and true in the 2012 election too. You can't use that as an excuse. The democratic party was led by someone who thought that Hillary was the candidate people would love enough to defeat Trump, and they were wrong. That's reality. Yes, Hillary does walk away with the popular vote, and yes, the electoral college hasn't been needed since the earliest days of our nation, but Obama STILL WON twice even with those problems in place. Hillary just wasn't charismatic enough to win where she needed to win.

2008 was over the moment the economic collapse happened, that ended the Republicans' chances. As for 2012, that was competitive, but incumbency helps a lot, that helped Obama win.

How would changing who leads the party change how the party is run? That's what we're going with here? It would, if nothing else, at least show a commitment to change. As it stands, could you provide me even the slightest evidence the party is actually going to chance in any significant way? I could accept keeping the same leader if some plan for changing the course of the party was put into place, after all. That would be something, but this, no, this was nothing.

This is one problem the party has right now, actually -- where is the next generation of Democratic leaders? Because of how badly decimated the Dems are at the state level, there are so few promising up-and-coming people in our party... it's a big issue for sure. I really hope our next DNC chair has some good ideas.

[alien space marine]

The biggest problem with Hillary Clinton, is that she was a Clinton. Traditionally democratic voters in rust belt places like Michigan and Ohio ect.. still remember the trade deals her husband made in the 90's and have not forgiven the clinton's for it, the dems wrongly assumed they had those votes locked. It's a fact now that a significant percentage of "trump democratic voters" in the rust belt would have voted Bernie over Trump on the ballot, if his name was there.

Hillary caved in to her donors and special interests groups by passing over Elizabeth warren, she let whatever resentment she might have had towards the Bernie camp blind her, to the fact she needed him on the ticket to stop trump from stealing the rust belt. Obama's pushing of the TPP and Hillary's previous support for the TPP before her sudden change In stance towards it, didn't help her credibility, being the wife of Bill Clinton was going to be a negative for her in those states.

Trump has shown his true colours by basically doing everything he attacked Hillary for with regards to appointing bank and Oil Execs, backpedaling on his campaign promises, the carrier deal was good PR for Trump in Indiana.

Obama had a positive campaign , He was new and relatively unknown , he didn't make the Crux of his campaign "vote for me I'm black" as his slogan.

[Dark Jaguar]

Some anti vac nut just got put in charge of vaccine safety.

Jill Stein is now officially a better candidate than Donald Trump (well, she was before, but any reservations about her are now dried up).

[A Black Falcon]

That does sound about right for someone with a clear policy of putting people in charge of government departments who hate and want to shut down the department they are going to lead, yes.

[Dark Jaguar]

Apparently Trump has promised his new plan will grant health insurance to "all Americans". I can't stop laughing at this. Every single aspect of this promise is absurd, from the notion that he actually has a plan to how this flies in the face of what republicans actually have stated they want.

And... he criticized Germany directly for their immigration policy...

Also, I'm not sure what to think of the dossier floating around (I'd be shocked if Buzzfeed of all news sites actually ran across something this amazing), but there's reason to think there's some reality to it. If so, we're looking at impeachment within the year. (I mean, I would hope high treason would be something that could be processed by the courts before Trump's term is up. If not, we've got some serious issues with the speed at which the court works to work out. I'm not sure if the right to a speedy trial applies here, but I really don't want a case that keeps getting delayed to the point it really doesn't matter what the trial ultimately concludes.)

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I suspect that a lot of the things in that report are true. Not all of them, of course, that kind of collection of intelligence would never be all right, but enough... enough that the main question now is, are Trump and/or some of the people around him actually working with our enemies (eg traitors), or "just" a not very smart businessman who supports people (read: Putin) who give him affirmation and financial support...

Either way this will go quite poorly, but I am encouraged that even several Republican-led Senate committees are investigating how deeply Trump's Russia ties go. The public has not been told the whole story, unfortunately, and while we absolutely should be told everything -- is there proof he or people around him have done anything serious, or not? -- at least there are already real investigations. I hope they continue despite what is sure to be a big pressure campaign from the administration to force people into line.

Apparently Trump has promised his new plan will grant health insurance to "all Americans". I can't stop laughing at this. Every single aspect of this promise is absurd, from the notion that he actually has a plan to how this flies in the face of what republicans actually have stated they want.

I know, it's pretty funny stuff. Is there even one single issue outside of his dedicated support for Russia that Trump is actually consistent on? Because I sure can't think of any.

[Dark Jaguar]

The issue of "Trump" always has Trump's support.

Whether Trump aided Russia intentionally or unwittingly, I'm pretty sure the law doesn't really care, nor should we, because both are pretty unacceptable in a president.

Also, I was more reminding that this dossier needs to actually be verified. It could all be fake after all. We can't get ahead of ourselves just yet just because we WANT to think it's real.

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/pol...ation.html

I just don't think that stories like this are just smoke with no fire behind it, or that you could have even SOME of stuff like this or the things in that dossier without there being very intentional actions behind them. Sure, the dossier needs to be verified, but just based on what we know, there's so much "there" there that I don't know how much it matters if a bunch of that dossier turns out to be inaccurate; the reality of Trump and his peoples' support for Russia is inarguable, the only question is how deep it goes. And reports like the one above sure suggest that yes, it's as deep as it seems. Which would make sense, with how tightly people like Manafort are tied to Russia!

[Dark Jaguar]

GAAAAAHHHH!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/...gulations/

MRAAAARGH!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/d...-reaction/

Ahahah! Erm.... AAAAARG!

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/press-secret...ice-cream/

NNNNOOOOOOOO!

http://www.9news.com/news/local/is-it-ev.../393921747

[A Black Falcon]

Yes, things are going just as we thought they would if he won. It's all been incredibly horrible, but some of it's so stupid it's kind of funny, at least? I don't know, I'm often thinking 'Yeah, that ridiculously awful thing/person is EXACTLY who or what what I'd expect this administration to propose or nominate! Heh... '

[Dark Jaguar]

Everything he does is unpredictable, which kinda makes him predictably unpredictable. The details are a surprise, but that he'd do it never is. I mean, he's getting into a fight with Australia? Who does that?

[A Black Falcon]

Well, I wouldn't have predicted that in specific, no... but that he'd pick fights with our allies? That isn't just predictable, he said he'd do it -- think of all his talk about how much he dislikes NATO presumably because of how much he likes Russia, then just spread that kind of action around the world and seeing him argue with Australia over immigration makes plenty of sense. He does not respect our alliances or allies, does not respect the world order, and does not respect facts or reality, but he does respect people who support him financially and/or act like they like him. So, he's okay with the UK thanks to Brexit and such, but not so much the rest of our allies, and Russia's great!

I just hope that the world can survive this presidency without some major war starting, every time he says incredibly stupid and ignorant things at that position it's so potentially dangerous... not that he realizes this or cares. He's not exactly smart, after all... (Ignore almost everything he says, foreign governments, that's probably good advice...)

[alien space marine]

Trump doesn't exist, he is just a figment of our collective imagination.

if we just believe it hard enough, it will come true

[Dark Jaguar]

That's really more Trump's style than my own.

[Dark Jaguar]

Alright, I'm sick of just laughing at this and agreeing with like-minded people on the web. What are we actually going to DO?

[Dark Jaguar]

A thought: Trump is doing so much we're all getting lost at what exactly to focus on.

I think we're going to have to break our protests into individual task forces, each one focused on one specific issue without distraction from all the other horrible things he's done.

[A Black Falcon]

That's a good point; ever since he started running for President, distracting people by distracting people from one scandal or absurd statement with another has been a very successful tactic for Trump, and that is still true. People get distracted away from the last one in favor of the next, though those 'older' scandals should still be pretty important...

[Dark Jaguar]

I wasn't just joking about that task force idea though. We really need to do that. If I were going to be part of one, I'd pick either one dedicated to his anti-science attitude or his anti-education attitude (in the form of his pick to lead education).

[Dark Jaguar]

Let's see... what else what else...

Okay, Kellyanne Conway gave a free commercial for Ivanka's brand. She literally said that was what she was doing while she was doing it. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...table.html Probably illegal. Sad.

Trump may not know how stairs work. http://jezebel.com/donald-trump-can-abso...1791749860

Trump accidentally put Steve Bannon on the national security council. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...eport.html

No idea how involved Trump was in this, but a recent operation ended pretty badly. http://www.latimes.com/politics/washingt...story.html Trump doesn't seem to have any condolences for those who died in this thing. All this time, I had hoped at LEAST Trump might value the sanctity of human life, but I guess he got one too many "you are a TRUMP, we are BETTER than the common rabble" speeches growing up, because he doesn't appear to care.

I've got a friend who grew up in a rich family. Apparently yes, "lessons" like that really ARE common place. They teach special manners most people never heard of too. Frankly when my friend talks about that upbringing, it is always fascinating and kinda horrifying. I had always assumed that sort of thinking was limited to cartoon villains. Next I'm going to find out that real life Greedly from Captain Planet exists, someone who actually loves smog and wants more of it.

Oh right, Ayn Rand is a literal cartoon caricature of an evil tycoon.

Mr. Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the smoke – the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening air, stretching in a long haze all the way to the city of New York somewhere beyond the sunset – and he felt reassured by the thought of New York in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas tanks, cranes and high tension lines. [p.255]

Lovely...

[A Black Falcon]

Isn't it nice that the Trump admnistration is hopelessly incompetent, openly corrupt, utterly unprepared to govern the nation, and so far seemingly not clear on whether they are willing to do so or not?

No, seriously... think of how much worse things would be with an actual effective Republican-dominated government, like those we see in the 25 states with unified Republican control! If the federal government was like https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/11/us/st...iftly.html what this article describes it would be so much worse for our nation than it is. Yeah, incompetent, maybe treasonous stupidity is bad, and the Trump administration has already done some terrible things and they are sure to do more soon, but it'd be much worse with a sane person in charge actually able and prepared to govern. So yeah, unless he starts a stupid pointless war for no reason or something, be glad for their incompetence, it's saving us from even more despicably terrible things.

[Weltall]

I wonder if the Democratic campaign strategy is going to be "Trump's bad and we're not as bad as he is" again. It will be if the Dems want to keep losing.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.

http://observer.com/2017/02/donald-trump...n-embassy/

*grabs popcorn*

[Dark Jaguar]

I wonder if the Democratic campaign strategy is going to be "Trump's bad and we're not as bad as he is" again. It will be if the Dems want to keep losing.

Oh please no! The democrats need someone charismatic. If Bernie is still in good health, I'll still go for him, but at this point I'm rooting for Elizabeth Warren. She's the one to get it done (and other stereotypical political mantras). I'm pretty sure Hillary is through though (at least as a presidential candidate). There's no way they'd attempt that again. There's voters who regret voting for Trump right now who are STILL convinced Hillary would have been "so much worse". That's baggage they can't afford.

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/...opart.html This is pretty good... funny stuff. :)

http://observer.com/2017/02/donald-trump...n-embassy/

*grabs popcorn*

Makes sense, why make it that easy to get our secrets? It's not like Trump would read the reports anyway, but Moscow sure would...

[Weltall]

There's voters who regret voting for Trump right now who are STILL convinced Hillary would have been "so much worse". That's baggage they can't afford.

Yeah, that was one big problem I had with her as a candidate in the first place. Lots of people really could not stand her and would never be convinced to vote for her. A lot of those people did not end up voting for Trump, either. It was the height of idiocy to install such an overwhelmingly unpopular candidate in such a crucial election, even if her opponent was also overwhelmingly unpopular. And America will be paying for that idiocy for decades.

[Dark Jaguar]

I didn't bother reading that application. Could you just write "DJ is the best possible candidate and everyone knows it." on there for me?

[Dark Jaguar]

I know it was hyperbole, but nothing anyone else does can ever be called the height of idiocy when Trump is president. They reached a small camp on the way to that height, sure, but they've no hope of reaching that particular flag. Not enough oxygen up there to support brain activity, you see.

On a serious note, democrat diehards are still telling me she's a proven candidate because "she won". Yes, we can't discount that she won the popular vote, but that's an argument for changing the electoral system itself, not for using Hillary again. In terms of percentage, she barely squeaked out that symbolic victory, and the democrats can't be satisfied with "just barely inched ahead". They need someone who promises a much bigger margin than that. More fundamentally, yeah but she didn't win though. She lost, because she's not in the white house making executive decisions. The rules may be unfair, but until change comes to the system, those are the only rules the democrats should care about, not the hypothetical ones where her cabinet picks are rousing republican rabble. THAT is why the democrats can't be satisfied with the candidate that just barely ekes out a victory. They need one that's got enough overwhelming support that their victory is all but assured. Clinton is not that candidate, for better or worse. They need the charismatic one that promises to actually make the democratic party stick with their supposed values.

[A Black Falcon]

So the question now is, when will the Republican Party finally cave and actually start seriously investigating Trump? The revelations keep getting worse and worse, but so far most Republicans are still defending him and refusing to push back much against him at all... when we're talking about very serious allegations about how many top people in this administration, starting with Trump of course, are working with Russia! Russia, the Republican Party's big enemy throughout the cold war, is now their ally because of Trump? It's awful. I hope that they change soon, because this shouldn't be a partisan issue; if it was a Democrat in this position, I would never be defending them!

Yeah, that was one big problem I had with her as a candidate in the first place. Lots of people really could not stand her and would never be convinced to vote for her. A lot of those people did not end up voting for Trump, either. It was the height of idiocy to install such an overwhelmingly unpopular candidate in such a crucial election, even if her opponent was also overwhelmingly unpopular. And America will be paying for that idiocy for decades.

You just won't quit with your Hillary-hate, will you... because the fact is, Hillary won by millions. Whoever our candidate is winning this year was going to be difficult, because after a two-term president it is common for the other party to win, but she did win the popular vote. Trump is only president because a handful of Midwestern states went for him by extremely narrow margins. And that's one of many flaws in your case here -- Trump only won because of winning over white voters in those states, after running a campaign with a strong focus on exactly that audience. Would some other Republican have been as successful there? Would one of those other Republicans have done as well with that key audience that won the election for Trump? Maybe, but maybe not; we'll never know. I think you could make a good case that some other Republican would have lost that same race, if they ran a more traditionally Republican race and didn't hit on the horrible but effective excessively racist line that got Trump so much success...

I didn't bother reading that application. Could you just write "DJ is the best possible candidate and everyone knows it." on there for me?

That's a great response, fits the application perfectly. Good job. :)

[A Black Falcon]

So as the repercussions from Flynn being forced out because of his probably traitorous conversations with Russian government agents, continue to ripple, we have two major questions:

1) What will it take for the Republican Party, who so far are stonewalling investigations into Trump, to turn on him? The major pro-Russian name left is, of course, Trump's himself, but in order to remove him his party will need to act on it at some point.

2) So, are those Republicans blocking some investigations, an independent commission or prosecutor, investigations into his taxes, and more simply because they hope this will all blow over and they can get back to cutting taxes and gutting Obamacare, or are a lot of them also involved in the Russia-connections scandal personally as well?

Articles are now saying again that Trump people were in contact with Russia during the campaign, but we still don't know the details, and the Republican Party hopes we don't so that they can get their awful domestic agenda through. But with how fast things are moving, I don't see how they get that chance. Trump declaring war on our intelligence agencies may have happened because of his affinity for Russia, but it was a critical mistake which now is seriously damaging him, and that is sure to continue regardless of what Congressional Republicans say... so, how many will go down with him? The sooner they ditch him, the more will probably escape the now quite likely collapse of this administration, I'd think. But that also cripples their agenda, so they stonewall... until more bricks fall thanks to government leakers and intelligence agencies who want to stop having a Presidency that is leaking our secrets to the Kremlin. Related to that, this is a pretty good article on why this time the crime itself might actually be worse than the cover-up, which could explain part of why Trump is unwilling to explain anything about the Russia or Flynn scandals: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017...hael-flynn

However...

3) What will it take for the Democratic Party's elected representatives to actually fight back and fully resist this administration? For example: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/02/15...reme-Court No, Dick Durbin, there is no way that this president should be allowed a Supreme Court pick without full, 100% resistance from our side.

Any Democrats who aren't going to resist as much as we need to deserve the angry messages from their constituents that they are sure to get. And no, asking Bernie to tell people to stop probably will not help. ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost...story.html ) :p

[alien space marine]

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

[Dark Jaguar]

ABF, the real question is apparently "who keeps ratting us out?".

[A Black Falcon]

Ugh, yeah. That's an obvious cover of course -- who cares about the illegal activity and likely treason, the real problem are the people revealing it! It's an obvious attempt at hiding the story, but I think that this story is too large and prominent to stay hidden. The whole truth will come out eventually, the only question is how long it takes... and whether, once it does, the Republicans in Congress will be forced to actually do something about it. They better be.

Additionally, you suggested mentioning the Humble Freedom Bundle here, so sure! Humble Bundle currently has a really fantastic bundle, with scores of indie PC games, e-books, and more available for only $30. Probably the main headline title is The Witness, but there's a lot more... and it's all for charity. The ACLU and two others, particularly; it's a clear anti-Trump message, and is well worth buying both for that message and also for the huge number of games included. It'll be available for a bit more than three more days, so anyone interested still has time to buy. https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom#

[Dark Jaguar]

The excuse they are making pretty much gives the game away.

"All these reveals are lies, LIES! Also, they're leaking classified information!" Trump, why would you classify a random lie? Have you classified all possible fictions?

[Weltall]

You just won't quit with your Hillary-hate, will you... because the fact is, Hillary won by millions. Whoever our candidate is winning this year was going to be difficult, because after a two-term president it is common for the other party to win, but she did win the popular vote.

So what if she won the popular vote? She didn't win the election. In the system this country has always used to elect Presidents, Clinton lost. Keep fighting the battle you lost and you'll just keep losing more battles in the future.

And you seem to think, even after three months, that this was just some kind of unusual aberration and not merely the latest and most devastating in a series of election defeats that have handed the entire United States government over to the Republican Party. You don't even recognize the fact that there's a problem.

Trump is only president because a handful of Midwestern states went for him by extremely narrow margins. And that's one of many flaws in your case here -- Trump only won because of winning over white voters in those states, after running a campaign with a strong focus on exactly that audience.

The flaw in your case is that you think I'm only talking about the 2016 Presidential election... in which "the most qualified candidate ever" couldn't even beat a literal moron with a third-grade vocabulary, but Democratic candidates also managed to do worse than expected all across the board in all other elections. And that's just in 2016! Let's not forget that there are elections every single year at the local level and Democrats often don't even try to win them.

It wouldn't have mattered that much if Hillary had won. She would have been gridlocked worse than Obama and lacked the personal charisma to make up for it come re-election time because, as I can't stress enough, Democrats have virtually no power anywhere on any level of the United States government except in places where they are already firmly entrenched. Then we would have simply had 2016's nightmare delayed for four years.

Of course, if the Democrats don't get their heads out of their asses and actually do anything at all to signal that they've learned their lesson from this, you can look forward to more of the same nightmare then. This party has a crippling competency issue and have become a party of center-left reactionaries. And 'reactionaries' is the key word; Trump plays the Democrats like a fiddle. Every time he says something that makes them react with outrage and not very clever memes, he succeeds in distracting millions of people from what's really going on. Yeah, we get it, Trump's a pussy grabbing racist. If you think reminding everyone of the fact in 2020 is going to win any elections, go sit down and let's find someone else who actually paid attention to the election we just had.

So the question now is, when will the Republican Party finally cave and actually start seriously investigating Trump?

When they feel pressure from the voting public and not until. The democrats and left-wing media bring it up but refuse to focus on it as they should. So they have nothing to fear and have no reason to cave.

[A Black Falcon]

The excuse they are making pretty much gives the game away.

"All these reveals are lies, LIES! Also, they're leaking classified information!" Trump, why would you classify a random lie? Have you classified all possible fictions?

Pretty much, yeah. Trump does not seem to be a great liar, even for his usual incoherence it's obvious that he's struggling to explain away all the Russia ties, and not doing a very good job of it...

So what if she won the popular vote? She didn't win the election. In the system this country has always used to elect Presidents, Clinton lost. Keep fighting the battle you lost and you'll just keep losing more battles in the future.

Winning the popular vote says a lot about what the people of this nation actually want to do, though. Once again we are reminded of how badly the electoral college needs to go away.

And you seem to think, even after three months, that this was just some kind of unusual aberration and not merely the latest and most devastating in a series of election defeats that have handed the entire United States government over to the Republican Party. You don't even recognize the fact that there's a problem.

What are you talking about, the huge problems the Democrats face because of regional sorting (that is, liberals mostly moving to California, Chicago, and such, and leaving places which are turning red such as the Midwest... or more locally, greater Portland growing while Maine District 2 shrinks and reddens significantly...), liberals not voting in off-year elections, Republican gerrymandering in many states, and the sheer number of states totally dominated by Republicans are huge problems that have been around for some time. Republican domination at the state level has been one of the worst things to happen during Obama's time in office, and it's really unfortunate that no one in our party has figured out a way to slow that down, or how to get liberals to actually vote in non-Presidential elections. Maybe the Trump administration will do that, which would be a positive side effect to this terrible administration, if it happens.

The flaw in your case is that you think I'm only talking about the 2016 Presidential election... in which "the most qualified candidate ever" couldn't even beat a literal moron with a third-grade vocabulary, but Democratic candidates also managed to do worse than expected all across the board in all other elections.

Hillary's gender probably was the key behind why she lost, sadly enough. Thanks to not having to deal with latent and overt sexism, a male candidate would probably have won in those same circumstances... and that's exactly the kind of reason why we need a female president, but this election showed how hard it is to accomplish. Pretty sad stuff.

As for that last sentence though, while Republicans did do better than polls indicated, it wasn't a massive miss -- polls were only off by a couple of points. I believe that it's common for polls to be off by that amount.

And that's just in 2016! Let's not forget that there are elections every single year at the local level and Democrats often don't even try to win them.

It wouldn't have mattered that much if Hillary had won. She would have been gridlocked worse than Obama and lacked the personal charisma to make up for it come re-election time because, as I can't stress enough, Democrats have virtually no power anywhere on any level of the United States government except in places where they are already firmly entrenched. Then we would have simply had 2016's nightmare delayed for four years.

There is truth to this, yes. Given the way things went, what would be an optimistic version of a Hillary win, her barely winning by holding PA, MI, and WI? Would that come with the PA and WI senate seats, though? If so then the Dems would have a 50-50 Senate majority (thanks to having the VP's vote)... but lose even one of those, and that'd be easy, and the Republicans keep their Senate majority. But even with a 50-50 Senate, almost nothing would get done because that Republican House majority is going nowhere. Over the past six years the constant state of dysfunction in Washington has been incredibly frustrating, and yeah, winning the Presidency would not have fixed that; instead, it would just continue the status quo as it has been since 2010, where Republicans control most things except for the Presidency, and nothing much gets done. That's a bad place for this nation to be in, but how do we get out of that when Republicans are getting so much from being so terrible and, at times, un-American in their intransigent refusals to actually let government function?

On the other hand though, that same problem is exactly why things are going so badly for the Republicans so far: after running against government for so long, how can you suddenly pivot to actually running it? Can you take away Obamacare like you promised? Some Republicans aren't so willing now that if they passed something it'd actually become law... and what about tax reform? That is struggling as well. And that wall may never get built. Etc. This is a somewhat inevitable result of electing a President who is totally incompetent and did not run on any real policy issues and a Congress dedicated to saying "no" to everything but who now actually have to run things, but it is interesting to watch. The question is, what will the result be? Will they get their act together and start passing terrible, incredibly destructive bills? Will they pass some, but far fewer than they wanted? Or will it all just melt down, as it has been through the first month... who knows.

I just hope that the end result is that Democratic voters actually turn out and vote in 2018, and that maybe, just maybe, at some point the Republicans go back to being an actual political party again who believes in the concept of governance. Because we need a two party system, with two actual parties who believe in democracy!

Of course, if the Democrats don't get their heads out of their asses and actually do anything at all to signal that they've learned their lesson from this, you can look forward to more of the same nightmare then. This party has a crippling competency issue and have become a party of center-left reactionaries. And 'reactionaries' is the key word; Trump plays the Democrats like a fiddle. Every time he says something that makes them react with outrage and not very clever memes, he succeeds in distracting millions of people from what's really going on. Yeah, we get it, Trump's a pussy grabbing racist. If you think reminding everyone of the fact in 2020 is going to win any elections, go sit down and let's find someone else who actually paid attention to the election we just had.



When they feel pressure from the voting public and not until. The democrats and left-wing media bring it up but refuse to focus on it as they should. So they have nothing to fear and have no reason to cave.

There has been a lot of energy on the left since this election, and I expect that it will continue until our representatives finally figure out taht they need to actually resist the Republicans. Work with them if there is actually something reasonable, sure, but everything else MUST be blocked. And with things as they are now, there are not exactly many reasonable policy positions coming from their site at the moment.

[Dark Jaguar]

I like to call classifying made-up stories "Pop Secret information".

[Sacred Jellybean]

I didn't know whether this belonged here or in the de-facto "Fuck Alex Jones" thread... but... uh...

"But [Alex Jones] is apparently taking on a new role as occasional information source and validator for the president of the United States, with whom, Mr. Jones says, he sometimes speaks on the phone."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/busin...&smtyp=cur

[Dark Jaguar]

It's hard to keep up the outrage sometimes, but we have to keep reminding ourselves this isn't normal and this is very bad.

[A Black Falcon]

Alex Jones sounds like the perfect advisor to feed him "news" that satisfies Trump's insane delusions... which is of course why that's so bad, because of how much power Trump has, but who can he trust? Not the news media certainly, they actually tell the truth (sometimes)! And the truth is anathema to Trump these days...

On that note, file this in the "scary scenario that I hope doesn't happen" file: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2...ism-losing Basically, the article says that Trump gets more authoritarian as he fails. The article makes a lot of sense, we just need to make sure that he just fails, instead of failing until he gets the system reorganized to get rid of that silly "democracy" and "rights" stuff and to give his cabal complete control...

[Sacred Jellybean]

"Trump is flirting with the idea that anti-Semitic incidents are false flags — again"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-...c788080009

Looks like that Alex Jones influence is rearing its ugly head.

Guys, I can't take much more of this. Is this reality?

[Sacred Jellybean]

Relevant: http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...36654.html

It's afternoon, and Jones is walking through the studio, his adrenaline level high and his blood sugar low. He needs to get something to eat. Platters of BBQ - chicken, beef and sausages - are set out on a table in the conference room. "Good barbecue," says Jones. "You tasted it already?"

He piles up food onto a plastic plate, and then he suddenly takes off his shirt without explanation. With his bare torso, he sits there and shovels meat into his mouth, a caricature of manliness, but also a show of power to the reporter sitting in front of him. He can do as he pleases.

Then Jones gets up and holds out a sausage. "Wanna suck?" he asks.

...I... I swore this must be a joke website. So far as I can tell, it's not, and is in fact a very respected German news outlet.

:psyduck:

Guys, help.

[Dark Jaguar]

Okay FINE! Toss me a beret.

[A Black Falcon]

On the note of Alex Jones (but worse), Trump today said that the Jewish community center call threats might be fakes done by Jews to get attention... an idea which... well, was tweeted to him by David Duke a few days back.

Trump: https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/...0864147456
Duke: http://imgbox.com/dqxhSnW2

Yeah, that's even worse than repeating things Alex Jones says.

[Dark Jaguar]

I've learned to stop quoting people named Duke. They tend to say stupid things.

[alien space marine]

[qoute] I've learned to stop quoting people named Duke. They tend to say stupid things. [qoute/]

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

[Dark Jaguar]

You stupid stupid idiots! THIS is how you're making your big comeback? You're trying to trick the elderly into thinking you're Republicans? Are you serious? Are you SERIOUS? No, let's not get your liberal base fired up and excited about what your party can do for them. No, no let's get a weird family restaurant full of aging creepy faces to convince your grandparents that democrats aren't scary. Shut the hell up and get out of my sight!

[A Black Falcon]

... So, this Trump administration sure is going great...

And with how dysfunctional and divided the Republicans are, there's even a real chance that some of their horrible major policy pushes will fail, too! Their party is tearing itself in multiple direction without a large enough majority to just push through anything, and Trump is incompetent and has no idea how to push congress members to vote for bills he wants, the way an actual politician would. Gutting the ACA? Might happen, but it seems less and less likely every day. Distracting people away from Russia? Maybe for the moment, but that's not going to last, the story is not going away. And anyway, this absurd "Obama wiretapped me" lie is surely reminding people of Russia too, as, well, it is a false and made-up story, but why would Obama be supposedly doing such a thing? It's not just because Trump was the other party's nominee after all, it's another sign of Trump's insecurity and weakness.

He is succeeding at one thing, though -- making the government not work. After all, by not nominating people to fill most of the empty spots in the executive branch and then nominating people who despise those departments to lead them, you start tearing apart the bureaucracy, which, if successful, would be one more of those steps towards the dictatorship he so badly wants. Poor little baby Trump only wants everyone to agree with him and do whatever he says without argument, why must all these people -- people who oppose him in the bureaucracy, judges, Democratic members of congress, Republicans on occasion, etc -- oppose him?

And that is the real worst thing about Trump's ascendancy to power. Yes, the damage he's doing to our government, in making it stop functioning, is awful. The potential environmental damage from his administration's global warming denial is incredibly dangerous. If Gorsuch gets through that'd be a disaster for the court. If they repeal the ACA a lot of people will die who shouldn't have. Etc. Those are really bad things... but seeing America slip towards authoritarianism and against the democratic values that are so important to this nation is an incredibly bad sign for the future. Even if we get through the Trump administration with democracy intact, unless the right accepts again that democracy and compromise are essential values, things will stay really bad. (They wouldn't be as bad if liberals would actually vote of course, but that's another issue...) Trump's ignorance, lack of interest in the details about how government works, etc. have so far led to chaos and no major accomplishments. I hope that continues until either the Republicans lose in 2018 and we try to impeach Trump after winning the House (if liberals vote... again, I'm not betting on it, but here's hoping?), but we'll see, maybe the Russia scandal will eventually get bad enough to take Trump down even before that. We will see.

... But seriously, the direction this nation is going in right now is so sad. There is a lot of hope, as the nation is steadily getting more friendly to Democrats demographically over time, but so long as Republicans can gerrymander themselves into majorities, as they currently can as we all know, that may not matter, as we saw in the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, or in the gerrymandering that helps Republicans hold the House with as many seats as they have, even when they lose nationwide popular votes by wide margins. I hope that we can get past this, because challenges like how horrible global warming is going to get, how to deal with how many jobs computerization is removing from the workforce, etc. require very serious focus. The best of America is when we advocate for ideals like democracy, human rights, civil society groups, charity, immigrants, and more. Of course there have been many failings along the way, many of them because of persistent racism, but I do think that America is a great nation... one that Trump does not respect, because none of those things that make us great bring people to worship his eminence. Again, seeing people elect as leader someone who explicitly rejects the entire basis of what makes this nation what it is, from being a nation of immigrants (think of The New Colossus, the poem that is on that plaque in the Statue of Liberty) to the moral and political values that America has aspired towards since the very beginning is tragic. That Americans would even consider giving such a person so much power, again, is a really bad sign for that future. Will the so far atrocious performance of this administration break people from this trend against government and world leadership, or will it continue? We will see, I guess. Trump is not responsible for it all, he just appeared at just the right time with just the right message. Those forces were building regardless, it is now just even more obvious than it was before. Much like Brexit, it's just insane to see great nations destroy themselves because of unforced errors and racism.

(On a related note, one of the oddest things about Trump's budget is how he boosts up military hard power spending so much, while absolutely gutting everything that gives America its soft-power leadership around the world -- foreign aid, the State Department, immigration, etc etc etc. What is the point of having such a large military when we are simultaneously surrendering our leadership of the world over to Russia, our main rival? It doesn't make much sense. I know Trump himself is probably not smart enough to figure this out, but seriously, what are the people working for him thinking?)