You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[Weltall]

I don't know why you deleted that post, Weltall, but on a note related to the point you made, Trump's greatest genius this campaign has been the realization that the press has no interest in truth or facts, only ratings and creating a close race. So, they attack Hillary mercilessly for minor or invented faults, while giving Trump much more of a pass for far worse transgressions, in the name of "equal coverage" for both. You can't seem to be too anti-Trump, after all, it'd look bad! So just ignore half or more of the horrendous things he says and does instead while ripping Hillary for basically nothing, it's the only way to be fair.

A recent perfect example of this was how the press reported things after Hillary's big speech on how strongly racist right-wingers support the Trump campaign. For anyone who missed it, she gave a detailed, fact-based speech loaded with examples and proof of how racists love the Trump campaign and how he courts them. In response, Trump made an unsupported comment about how "Hillary is a bigot" based on basically nothing whatsoever.

So, how did most of the press report it? "Hillary and Trump trade claims the other is racist", essentially, was the headline in most places. Instead of accurately reporting on the actual statements, the press invents a false equivalence between the two that drags down Hillary while propping up Trump, making his latest stupid lie sound equal to a detailed and well-researched presentation. When you have a candidate facing such a hostile press, it's no wonder that some in the public are confused and her poll numbers slipped recently! More truthful reporting would be much harsher on Trump and might have kept this race the laugher it should be, but with this media it'll take all the effort we can put together to overcome the massive amounts of sexism (also see: Matt Lauer's horribly sexist treatment of Hillary in the recent candidate forum), repetition of Republican lies and decades of anti-Clinton spin, and false equivalence and actually win this election. It's sad stuff, but fortunately the polls seem to be stabilizing, so I don't think Trump is still gaining. He should be doing much worse than he is, but we're still on track for a solid win, and it hopefully still will end up as the big win it should be. That's still much more likely than a Trump win is, thankfully.

And I need not even say how the media would react if any Democrat ever had said anything about a foreign rival as Trump has with his the mountains of adoring praise for Vladimir Putin... but Trump knows that when you say enough terrible things people stop paying attention or hitting you for those statements as hard as they should, so he gets something of a pass for his sometimes anti-American statements against the US military and in praise of Russia because "that's just Trump being Trump and saying crazy things again". And that there is the worst thing about this race. Yes, he has an unending list of crazy things he has said, but every time he says something horrendous it should get a strong reaction, instead of something of a pass because he keeps saying terrible things! When he gets even a partial pass for saying a horrible or crazy thing he, and in cases like NBC's candidate forum Putin as well, wins.

Everyone knew this was how it was going to be, if they were paying attention. Trump isn't a new phenomenon, merely the latest, orangest face of a Republican Party which doesn't like Trump only because he's being too honest about what the party really stands for: white males who are straight and Christian and of at least some level of material wealth. While some GOP idiots have actually suffered for being honest before (Todd Akin comes to mind as an example), it usually doesn't work out this way. Most of the time, they will say something outrageous or even outright hateful, and other than the predictable outrage, no consequences are really in store for them most of the time. For some reason, people thought it was going to be different, and Trump's apparent nosedive appeared to be confirmation of this assumption.

It would probably be sufficient in most cases, but HRC is hated and distrusted by almost as large a portion of the population as he is. Is that fair? No. She sucks but is still a clearly superior choice, there's no question. Is it right? Well, she really seems to go out of her way to invite criticism whenever it doesn't just come to her.

Problem here is, winning the White House should have been the top priority. Putting up the best candidate should have been the top priority. And that didn't happen. Instead of giving the Democratic Party a de facto leader who is (relatively) spotless in terms of reputation and who is a generator of voter enthusiasm on par with Donald Trump, the voters made the wrong choice and instead selected a candidate who (fairly or not) is a lightning rod for distractions and controversy and does not have a) the charisma to make up for it and b) the ideological spark that the Party has so damnably lacked in recent decades. We've brought a knife to a gun fight in the hopes that the guy with the gun is too stupid to use it properly.

I mean, the Volkischer Beobachter Breitbart crowd is going to make up scandals if they can't find any, sure. They do it a lot as it is. They don't have to do as much work as they would have against Bernie Sanders, for whom the best they could hope for is throw around the world 'socialist' and pray that it works better against Sanders than it ever did against Obama. For some reason, there are Democrats who honestly believe that would have been more damaging to our White House chances than Benghazi, email servers, and an overt, unapologetic relationship with the architects of the 2008 recession.

Honestly, she's a terrible, almost inept candidate. Her campaign is run by idiots who have little grasp of how to win. When Trump was plummeting, what did Clinton do to help accelerate his plummeting? Whenever she wasn't staying entirely out of the spotlight, it was only to emerge and remind everyone that Trump sucks. Which he does, sure. We already know he sucks. 42% (+-) of voters agree and are voting for her. That does absolutely nothing to convince that 15ish % of voters who think she sucks as bad as he does. It does little to convince non-voters to participate. Or, it was to emerge and court disaffected Republicans, which seems insane. Most of them who say they hate Trump will probably still vote for him. A lot who say they won't probably will anyway, especially now that Clinton's looking vulnerable and the polls are trending away from her.

But, this is not just a problem HRC and her campaign is responsible for. Liberal media, especially that which favors Clinton (DKos, looking at your ugly orange shit here), and the Party in general, are great at illustrating the moral bankruptcy of conservatives. They are great at jumping on every gaffe and pointing out every single stupid or hateful thing conservatives say. Problem is, it is preaching to the choir. DKos is every bit as much a Democratic echo chamber as Breitbart is for racists and shit heads. Republicans have a ceiling (or, perhaps an Electoral Blue Wall) because they have only invective while not even pretending to care about finding actual solutions to anything ever. This is not nearly as egregious on the Dem side but it still dominates the internal discourse. I already know the GOP has fucked up everything. I know they're terrible human beings who believe that human empathy is a sign of weakness. What I don't know is why we sit back and gripe about this instead of taking the fight to them in the venue of public opinion. Trump is going to fuck everything. What is Clinton going to do? Not fuck everything? Not be as bad? I mean obviously. How about, instead, a proactive approach that advances the cause of progressive politics instead of interminably playing defense against an opponent which, by rights, should have been rendered ineffective a decade ago? Instead, the Democrats almost compulsively play down to the Republicans and give them advantage after advantage they could never achieve on their own.

Perhaps a historically embarrassing defeat to Trump will finally light a fire under the party and make them realize that it was entirely their own fault it happened (because it absolutely is), but if crushing midterm defeat after crushing midterm defeat hasn't accomplished that, why would this?

Republicans energize their base. They turn out voters. They have to because demographics are always eroding their influence. Democrats seem to be complacent because they feel demographics will eventually become too big an advantage to overcome. Perhaps in ten or twenty years that will be true. And it will be cold comfort to an America with six conservative judges on the Supreme Court.

I'm not a fan but I want her to win this. Thing is, I have never had much reason to feel confident she's up to the task. And here she is right now, bleeding away a huge polling lead that was giftwrapped, squandering an advantage far beyond anything Obama could have hoped to enjoy. Which, above all the other problems I had with her as a candidate in the primary, is the biggest reason why I supported her opponent so stridently. She's highly qualified, very intelligent, tons of relevant experience, and is 2 points ahead of a literal idiot who is probably not qualified to be an assistant manager at Wal-Mart.