You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[Weltall]

Donald Trump has been steadily erasing Hillary Clinton's average polling leads for almost two entire months. The 'post-convention bump' put him over the top, but he was already gaining on her for a long time.

Everything is not okay here.

[A Black Falcon]

For anyone here who has not watched it, this is a must-watch.



Beyond that, between the FBI report and the RNC last week, it's understandable that Hillary has had a bad month. But we're past those things now, so it should be uphill from here on out... helped out by more horrendously unacceptable comments from Trump, such as today's that double down on his pro-Russian comments, this time in a borderline seditious way -- his comments that he wishes Russia would hack the government to release the rest of Hillary's emails is an unprecedented thing for a US presidential candidate to say!

And on top of that, DNC TV ratings through the first two days are 25% higher than RNC ratings were last week, so more people are watching this than their horrible hatefest. That's a good sign for Hillary getting a solid polling bounce. I sure hope that happens.

[Dark Jaguar]

Flowery, yes, but lacking a lot of substance, like most political speeches. Sorry ABF, but those sorts of feel-good speeches are exactly the sorts of things that turn me off of politicians, and I'm not really about to swallow it all hook line and sinker and claim it meant more than it did. Michelle's speech had a bit more impact, noting the fact that the white house was built by slaves was a pretty big one.

It would have been good if instead of pretending like back room deals didn't happen, Bernie and Hillary both had come out and said "hey, I had this position before, but due to pressure from Bern, I and the party at large have switched on a number of key issues you care about". Also, admitting that some of the things she's done haven't been good, but she admits it and is willing to move on. That never happens with ANY politician, granted, but I'd love to see them completely defuse Trump's attacks by just owning up to the only things that have any meat on them.

But never mind about that. Fact is, we have two candidates, and of the two, one is certainly a lot more corrupted by money (and ego) than the other. However, hating the other guy doesn't win elections. The important thing, the thing that the party needs to dedicate ALL their attention to (since Trump does a good enough job highlighting his own failures) is the good that Clinton and the party say they are committed to. Repeat those more liberal platform goals they've adopted over and over again, and don't be afraid to give specifics. THAT is what's going to win over the Bernie crowd more than anything, and THAT is what got people to cheer Bernie at the convention. Focus on destroying Trump, and you might as well focus on boxing a vat of pudding. Put the focus on the right place if you actually want to get that "crushing victory".

[A Black Falcon]

Flowery, yes, but lacking a lot of substance, like most political speeches.

I thought that the substance, policy-wise, was the lengthy list of good causes Hillary worked for in the '70s and '80s. I didn't know all of that stuff, and it was an impressive and noteworthy list. By reminding younger voters of these things, he helps convince them to support Hillary. She was once vilified by the right as a "liberal activist" for a reason, after all, and he went through the list -- work desegregating the South, helping disabled kids go to school, fighting for better schools in Arkansas (better teachers who are actually literate, more pay, more school counselors, etc.), and more...

And between that element of the speech and the more personal stories, the other substance was in humanizing here against the absurd "cartoon villain" version of Hillary that the Republicans have brainwashed so many Americans into believing -- and if people watched that speech, I think it should at least start succeeding at breaking down that false caricature. Bill gave a fantastic speech, and it was needed given the false impressions so many have of Hillary.

It would have been good if instead of pretending like back room deals didn't happen, Bernie and Hillary both had come out and said "hey, I had this position before, but due to pressure from Bern, I and the party at large have switched on a number of key issues you care about". Also, admitting that some of the things she's done haven't been good, but she admits it and is willing to move on. That never happens with ANY politician, granted, but I'd love to see them completely defuse Trump's attacks by just owning up to the only things that have any meat on them.

How would that defuse Trump's attacks at all? It'd just give him a new line of criticism... and as you say, nobody in American politics does this. It might be nice to see people be that honest, but I doubt it'll happen.

The important thing, the thing that the party needs to dedicate ALL their attention to (since Trump does a good enough job highlighting his own failures) is the good that Clinton and the party say they are committed to. Repeat those more liberal platform goals they've adopted over and over again, and don't be afraid to give specifics. THAT is what's going to win over the Bernie crowd more than anything, and THAT is what got people to cheer Bernie at the convention. Focus on destroying Trump, and you might as well focus on boxing a vat of pudding. Put the focus on the right place if you actually want to get that "crushing victory".

Many of the DNC speeches have mentioned the quite liberal goals of the platform, though, so it's not being ignored. I'm sure that will continue. And while you definitely don't want your main focus to be only on Trump, he needs to be attacked at least some, and Bill didn't do that yesterday. It'll be interesting to see how much Obama goes after Trump today... Biden probably will, but how much will Obama?

[Dark Jaguar]

Honesty wins over these particular people a lot better than flowery speeches, which to people like them comes across more as fertilizer. I wouldn't worry about Trump using such shocking honesty as a weapon. I mean, of course he would, but the attacks wouldn't win over any more Trump supporters, it'd just be more fodder for keeping what he's already got. That level of honesty would be unprecedented and a breath of fresh air.

On the other hand, here's what I have to say to the "Bernie or Bust" crowd. Bernie is supporting Hillary now for the same reason he kept his campaign going much longer than it was viable for. That is, it was always about making sure that, if he didn't win, at least a lot of his policies would. Hillary agreed to shift her policies further left in exchange for Bernie's support. More accurately, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, she changed her positions in exchange for Bernie's supporters and their VOTES.

This is very important, so read this slowly. If Hillary is not able to get those votes, failing to win over the "Bernie or Bust" crowd, SHE WILL HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON HER NEW PLATFORM! She will see that moving her position further left did not gain her any votes, and thus she will say "the deal is off" and move back towards center. Bernie is OUT of the race, he has given that up. He is no longer a candidate, and will not make any further attempt to become that candidate this cycle. Denying Hillary the vote means telling Hillary your opinions don't matter and she will treat them accordingly. It's not right, but it is what it is. The ONLY CHANCE to get Bernie's policies passed is to vote for Hillary. No, it isn't enough for her to win. BERNIE SUPPORTERS need to be the ones making the vote, or she's only going to pay attention to the issues of the people who DID vote her into office.

Hillary has a lot of problematic issues. She's got a good history of standing by some great causes, yes, and she's made some good promises. She's also got a lot of bad baggage that can't just be ignored, like her past position on the Iraq war. That's not something that can just be forgotten, and she would do well to own up to it, admit it was a mistake, and promise never to make such a lapse in judgment again. If she tries to make excuses to make that decision look like it wasn't so bad, Bernie supporters will see through that in an instant. No, tackle it head on and admit it was the mistake it was, and just WATCH as people are shocked that a candidate would have such candor and are suddenly willing to forgive. Admission of wrongdoing and promises of reform do a LOT to win over people, which modern politicians seem to forget. Of course the other side will use that as a weapon, but it'll fall flat coming from a candidate that doesn't even believe PERSONALLY that he's ever made a mistake in his life.

What we've got here is a choice between a politician with corruption, yes, but also with experience and current pressure to stay on the right side of social justice, and a giant toilet fire of a human being. It's not even a choice, but Bernie supporters' support for her is, in fact, way more important than her winning.

[A Black Falcon]

So the convention is over, and it was great! There were so many fantastic speeches throughout, and I didn't even watch nearly all of it, though I did watch the major ones. Hillary's acceptance speech was quite good, and I liked it a lot. She'll never be the naturally great speaker Bill or either Obama are, but she can be a good one, at least, and this was one of her best speeches I've heard. At almost an hour long it was on the long side, though still 20 minutes less than Trump's, but she filled that time well. Overall, this convention ends with me thinking more highly of Hillary than I did before, on most fronts, and I think she'll be a good president.

I am very concerned about the unlikelihood of our world doing anywhere near enough about global warming, but continued pressure and the obvious signs of things going very wrong (that we are already seeing, of course) should help encourage that -- and the platform is very strong here, we just need to follow up on that. But otherwise, it was great! Some parts were somewhat emotional, I must admit. One of many strong parts was when she said how some people find wonkish obsession over policy details "boring", but to the person for whom that policy really matters, it's not boring at all (and those details are vitally important). It was both a great statement, and a good summation of her basic personality. Her main theme words for this day, and maybe beyond, "Stronger Together", is good as well, since it both refers back to her long belief in working together for change, and is an absolute counterpoint to Trump's me-centric worldview. Oh, and the long video introducing her was great as well; Morgan Freeman is incomparable at that kind of thing!


One other thing I saw remarked on, and it's a good point, is how amazing it is that thanks to Trump the Democrats successfully presented themselves as the stronger party on national security, taking over that traditionally Republican mantle, but day four showed that off with a bunch of military and police speakers. The Muslim couple whose son died in the US Army were the most memorable for sure, and that was a moving speech.

General Allen's speech, though... hmm. He was basically shouting most of the time, intensely saying how great the US military is... while I agree that there are places we need it for, for sure, probably thanks to my parents memories of the Vietnam era I've always had mixed feelings about the military. Yes, because this is a dangerous world we can do great things and make the world a better place, and we must do that sometimes... but other times we do awful things, and you heard none of that side of it from Allen, except in his criticism of what Trump has said he wants to do (force the military to torture people, etc.). So yeah, the speech was too militaristic for me and I can't say I liked it, even if his main message -- pro-Hillary, anti-ISIS (he was involved in leading the anti-ISIS campaign I believe) and anti-Trump -- was good.

On a related note though, the protesters yelling things, of which there were some during certain speeches, such as Allen's and Hillary's. Apparently the core of the yellers were a few hundred Bernie delegates from California. For the most part, Bernie's yelling fans were annoyances, thanks to the counter-chants that effectively blocked the protesters, but sometimes nearly drowned out the speakers. Some were inappropriate, such as the ones aimed at the Medal of Honor-winning veteran. Considering his tone of voice and entirely pro-military speech, though, I understand why some aimed that chant at Gen. Allen, even though interrupting speakers like that is not good form. The worst were probably the regular ones aimed at Hillary, since that is the most important speech and I'd have liked party unity, but the much louder voices of the "hil-la-ry" and "U-S-A" chants and such showed them to be the small minority they were.

Honesty wins over these particular people a lot better than flowery speeches, which to people like them comes across more as fertilizer. I wouldn't worry about Trump using such shocking honesty as a weapon. I mean, of course he would, but the attacks wouldn't win over any more Trump supporters, it'd just be more fodder for keeping what he's already got. That level of honesty would be unprecedented and a breath of fresh air.

Perhaps, and it'd be interesting to see someone try it -- would it help them, if people appreciate honesty about positions a politician has taken purely for political reasons, or would it hurt, as those politicians do that because people like to be pandered to?

[Dark Jaguar]

Don't make the assumption that EVERYONE likes to be pandered to. I personally am suspicious instantly of anyone that says they are exactly who I want, and then I suspect my own desires for a bit just to be sure. It's why it took me so long to get on board the Bernie train to begin with. To be sure, this leads to issues whenever I deal with someone in sales, as their tactics bounce right off me and they end up insulting me more directly at some point as some sort of last ditch effort. I've actually had someone say one of those "woooooow"s to me, you know, the one that says "I can't believe you actually exist", when I told them that even accepting their claims that their offer would save me money, I still didn't want to deal with it. (Someone was trying to sell me a time share, and I honestly didn't want to deal with each of their points.)

Point is, when Obama says "America is already great", I get what he's driving at, but frankly I don't think America is all that great when I see what other countries get up to these days. It's pretending we don't have major shootouts once or twice a week right now when one says such a pandering thing. Of course, Trump is appealing to a class of people convinced America had a golden age we've lost and that he'll return us to it, and that's a blatent lie too, as generally things are much better now than ever during his claimed "golden age". I'm just saying answering pandering with pandering doesn't seem like the way to go. Besides, the sorts of voters they're trying to convince will take one look at the claim "America is already great" and say "well, except I can't afford new clothes for my kids and it's cheaper to pay the fee for having no insurance than to get your Obama care" (a real situation that I know many people personally are in) and they know that things aren't great. Problem is, they're believing Trump's ridiculous reasons things aren't great and not the dem's, because they aren't focusing on explaining the real reasons for the poor's situation enough. Everyone is playing with the exact same moves, and it gets annoying because I want to see someone break away from that. Let's see someone flip the table and try some new ways to win over voters. Trump's playing Poker, well, lets's see the dems play Go. Bernie was doing that. He was getting on stage and listing numerous facts and figures that won over a huge number of people because he was honestly dealing with the actual issues of their lives. When Bernie gave his support to Hillary, it seemed a betrayal, but even then he focused on the dem's platform changes he was able to get done to make good on changing the status quo.

It would be good for Clinton to say that some things are bad every now and then, and call the flaws in Obama care what they really are so that when she says she'll make it better, people understand WHY it'll be better. It sounds weird when a politician says "the previous person had a great system that helped so many Americans, so let's fix it". Better to say "While Obama's system helped some, here's a large group that it isn't helping, and another group it's actually hurt due to economic issues preventing them from affording insurance, so let's provide a public option this group can access, and it'll be paid for by those who have more than enough to spare". That is honest, and more to the point, it makes the issue clear and the solution clear. I want more speeches like that from Hillary. Bill listing her past accomplishments is not a bad idea, it establishes that in the past she did fight against inequality. However, that's not really stating her current policy. If I'm going to be telling people "do it anyway", I want something I can point to to say why, and that'd go a long way.

Back on the insurance thing, one of the worst assumptions that Obamacare made (implicitly) was that the only reason poor people don't buy insurance is because they can get away with it. I'm not saying it was bad, but loosing that public option was a major blow, and we're seeing the repercussions now. My own mother can't afford insurance right now. I'm one of the lucky few among the people I know who's job was already covering my insurance, or I wouldn't have it either. Oh, and the answer is NOT "make the fee more expensive than insurance". America's health care system needs a public option, or people I know will probably die. The dems were forced to make that a platform promise, and I want to see Hillary make that a reality. It's not like there's no way to spin it. If she says "my more progressive allies don't see how the past system hurt the working class, but I promise I'll solve the issue of forcing you hard working Americans to buy insurance by providing another option" she can win over people. Lots of people actually support progressive issues if they don't use certain labels. Most people support gun control, for example, if you specifically spell out the laws without ever using the phrase "gun control".

I'm just saying it's about time that the dems stopped being so terrified of losing votes they never had and courted people with honestly about their intentions.

[Dark Jaguar]

I did like how Hillary's speech did in fact address some classic Bernie points along the way.

However, I have one request. Can we all agree to stop using "folks" as a find/replace for "people" in these speeches? It doesn't make you seem more "down to earth", it just sounds awkward and kinda insulting. It's one word away from calling us all "smallfolk", and I'd rather be acknowledged as a person than a "folk".

[Dark Jaguar]

Attention to all Bernie or Busters, Jill Stein is NOT a good alternative!

On the one hand, she supports many of the same policies as Bernie, but don't let that blind you. Stein is anti-science as they come, and more so by the day. Sure, she accepts the consensus on global warming, but she's an anti-vaxxer, and recently came out stating she also thinks wireless devices hurt people.

While the second of those is merely a data point showing she only believes the science when it agrees with her personal beliefs, the anti-vaccination rhetoric has me dead set against her. I think such an attitude is incredibly dangerous, and held by the president would do untold harm to the health of the nation. It has the potential to kill more people than the Iraq war, frankly. If Stein is able to come around on such issues, I might change my opinion of her, but considering just how long Bill Mayer has been holding onto similar beliefs, I don't hold much hope out for her.

I'd have supported a Warren bid for presidency without blinking, but I can't support Stein in any good conscious and I'd warn anyone thinking of jumping to her to think for a moment about the importance of scientific understanding in a presidential candidate.

[Weltall]

Stein is not anti-vaccine so much as she is convinced that the FDA is run by the drug companies and that some skepticism is warranted as a result of this.

Although, there are only two pharma employees on the 17-board member of the FDA.

This is a lot like the furor over GMOs, which are not inherently bad (and as anyone else will tell you, we've been genetically engineering life forms for thousands of years), but get a bad reputation because of the strong association of GMOs with single, specific entity (Monsanto) constantly up to nefarious ne'er-do-well things. The FDA definitely has its problems but there's no evidence suggesting that vaccines cause anything bad to happen to anyone who isn't a polio or measles virus.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, Monsanto is a pretty awful company and I don't like a lot of things about GMO crops, for sure. I am not at all opposed to GMO labelling laws, and don't like this one congress passed since it's basically hiding the issue by only telling you that info in a QR code... the point being that few people would actually check such a thing. It's a Monsanto-funded override of Vermont's law, and that's unfortunate. Sure, all GMOs are not automatically bad, but that doesn't mean they are all good either! And when we're using GMOs to make crops more pesticide-resistant, so they can dump even MORE toxic pesticides in the ground without killing the plant, that is awful for the environment and the food as those pesticides go up the food chain. And as for wireless signals, I'm suspicious of that too; I know most studies show no link between cellphones and cancer, but I'm not entirely convinced. It needs to be studied more.

As for vaccines though, yes, vaccines are very important, I don't believe that anti-vax stuff one bit. Stein's anti-vax intonations are one of the worst things about her, policy-wise -- anti-vaxxers are causing very real harm that results in mumps epidemics and the like. There is no such issue with the GMO or wireless stuff.

[Weltall]

And as for wireless signals, I'm suspicious of that too; I know most studies show no link between cellphones and cancer, but I'm not entirely convinced. It needs to be studied more.

Why? The science seems to point definitively against any link and it's been studied thoroughly for over a decade. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices (just about every human in the world capable of using a phone has one) and the fact that they've been around for our entire lifetimes, by now a definitive link would have manifested if there ever was one.

GMO labeling doesn't seem to have any point to me because you will literally have to label every cultivated food item in existence. Even the stuff which is labeled 'non-GMO' is the result of, often, centuries or even millennia of selective breeding and genetic manipulation, even if the people first doing so had no such concepts in mind. 'Non-GMO' really isn't anything but a marketing trick scamming people into paying more for their food, just like "organic". And even though people with Celiac's disease really can't have gluten in their diets, gluten is of no risk to anybody else. Yet, people lay down big money for 'gluten-free' pizza and mac and cheese. When I see milk and artificial sweetener and popcorn and lettuce with "gluten-free" labeling, that's when you know it's a scam.

[Dark Jaguar]

The obsession over gluten is silly. There really are people with a serious disorder that causes them to react horribly to gluten. I'm kinda shocked that this became a health issue though, because most people don't have this issue, and a person would know if they did because it means horrible intestinal distress. That said, for those with the disorder, it's got to be a paradise out there right now, and they're probably hoping people like me don't tip the boat because it's got to be great to have such a wide variety of things they can eat like they've never had before.

ABF, I don't think you have as much to fear about GMOs as you think. Now, Weltall brings up a valid concern. We've been genetically engineering our crops for ages (and our livestock for that matter), but there's one thing to keep in mind. One, those changes took place over a long enough time that problems could be found and, ahem, weeded out before they could hurt too many people. Secondly, that genetic engineering is powerful stuff, but genetic cross-transfer is another ball game. Bacteria and viruses have been splicing their own genes since life began, but bigger critters haven't had the luxury save for very rare historical incidents, like absorbing a bacteria as part of it's own system (like in our guts). It is possible that introducing genes from all manner of species could have dangerous side effects. What I'm saying is that the creation of GMOs need a good level of oversight, to make sure self-interested companies aren't doing something stupid just to turn a buck. That wouldn't need labeling though. That's just a do-nothing bit of FUD. Oh, and by the way, I'd say old fashioned breeding should probably have a bit of regulation too. We've got some rather sad breeds of dogs who's skulls are too small for their own brains, or who's noses are stubby to the point of being concave, causing severe breathing issues. That first one is especially nightmarish, with that particular breed of dog having migraine level headaches it's entire life. Some regulation that forces breeders to consider health above all cosmetic issues would help.

Microwaves, in high enough amounts, can cook your flesh. That's about as dangerous as it gets. If you get too close to a cell phone tower while it's on and stand in the wrong place, you're going to get some nasty burns pretty quick. However, it doesn't have the capacity to break apart the bonds of DNA (it is infrared, and only light radiation at the high violet to ultraviolet have the energy needed to break those bonds, hence why ultraviolet, x-ray, and especially gamma are so dangerous). Now, changing DNA isn't the ONLY way to cause cancer. It is now known that altering the chemistry of cells (which changes how those genes are expressed) can do it too. Heat is something that can accelerate the chemistry of cells, which could potentially have an effect. However, the heat causes by the cell phones you or me use, or is emitted by the average set of power lines, is far lower than the heat we expose ourselves to every day. Cooking food on a stove top will heat you far more than your cell phone. No one's fearing cancer by taking a hot bath, so it's unlikely this is a major concern. Further, just to be sure, the brain is about the most efficient temp regulator in the whole body. It takes away what minimal heat those microwaves might cause nearly instantly.

What I'm saying is, there's really no reason to fear cancer from microwave exposure, and at best you might get burned, but only near incredibly powerful sources like the giant cell phone towers I mentioned. Don't play near electrical equipment. I was taught that by a lightning bug.

As for vaccines, of all the things I've listed, there is NO reason to worry about vaccines at all, regardless of your opinion on the medical industry (and dog howdy is there a lot of issues to unpack there). The biggest fear that one discredited scientist's report had was over the solution the vaccine was in, and not only was the solution itself cleared of all charges, modern vaccines don't even use that solution any more, so it's a moot concern anyway. Vaccines themselves operate using our body's own systems, and shouldn't be confused for antibiotics, which use an external agent instead. Some have tried to salvage it by saying "well, the problem is getting so many so close together, it can overload a kid's system". Partially true, but not in the way they think. The solution itself can act as a drug for a few hours in high doses, so someone who demands the doctor inject every single vaccine at once will see their kid acting basically drunk. Further, some of the vaccines cause other responses besides antibodies (potentially, fever), so too much of that together could make for a nasty weekend, so that's a threat. However, the generally implied fear is that the body's immune system can't handle adding so many targets. Except, no, the body deals with thousands upon thousands of foreign agents every day without being overworked. The handful in vaccines aren't about to push that beyond it's breaking point.

The bigger issue to me is that Stein, even if she wasn't entirely anti-vaccine, shows clear signs of a general anti-science stance when it comes to anything resembling an authority. I often see this attitude from the left wing, and it's a weakness that needs to be addressed. To be fair, around where I live, there's also a lot of distrust of "big medicine". It seems the far right also have this distrust of scientific consensus. It probably crops up anywhere a general "question authority and the status quo" mindset takes root. I mean, that mindset is healthy, but it can be taken too far if you literally need to try everything yourself before you believe it, as many have.

[A Black Falcon]

As for gluten, excepting the few people with legitimate Celiac's disease, the anti-gluten thing is just a fad diet, like the Atkins diet before it and such. It'll fade with time. As a huge fan of carbs, from bread to crackers (one of my staple foods!) to rice to potatoes, gluten-free or Atkins are never diets I would try...

[Dark Jaguar]

As for the Democratic Convention, it sure came across like along the way the democrats decided to pick up and dust off the rhetoric that the republicans abandoned when they went with Donald "America is awful now" Trump. That is, I heard so many "God Bless the USA", "Support our Troops" and "America is the greatest and we own the finish line" lines that someone could be forgiven for confusing the two. Mind, yes, they did intersperse that with democratic talking points. It's just clear that the democrats have picked up the nationalist flag (which... I guess... would just be the US flag) and ran with it.

[Weltall]

ABF, I don't think you have as much to fear about GMOs as you think. Now, Weltall brings up a valid concern. We've been genetically engineering our crops for ages (and our livestock for that matter), but there's one thing to keep in mind. One, those changes took place over a long enough time that problems could be found and, ahem, weeded out before they could hurt too many people. Secondly, that genetic engineering is powerful stuff, but genetic cross-transfer is another ball game. Bacteria and viruses have been splicing their own genes since life began, but bigger critters haven't had the luxury save for very rare historical incidents, like absorbing a bacteria as part of it's own system (like in our guts). It is possible that introducing genes from all manner of species could have dangerous side effects. What I'm saying is that the creation of GMOs need a good level of oversight, to make sure self-interested companies aren't doing something stupid just to turn a buck. That wouldn't need labeling though. That's just a do-nothing bit of FUD.

Oversight, definitely. Government exists, ideally, to regulate large entities and ensure their good behavior when no one else can. But GMO labeling does no good at all. It does not inform consumers or raise the level of discussion in any way. It's just a big "DON'T BUY THIS SCARY THING" label. Genetic modification is a very new science that we are still attempting to understand, and so to label yourself as anti-GMO takes you past the honestly skeptical and into the realm of agenda-driven paranoia.

[Dark Jaguar]

Agreed on all points.

[A Black Falcon]

Oversight, definitely. Government exists, ideally, to regulate large entities and ensure their good behavior when no one else can. But GMO labeling does no good at all. It does not inform consumers or raise the level of discussion in any way. It's just a big "DON'T BUY THIS SCARY THING" label. Genetic modification is a very new science that we are still attempting to understand, and so to label yourself as anti-GMO takes you past the honestly skeptical and into the realm of agenda-driven paranoia.

So it's new and not totally understood... so we should just believe Monsanto and let whatever get into the food supply, even though it's as you say not entirely understood? The first and second halves of your last sentence make little sense together. Going from taking a very long time to slowly turn one plant into something else, to doing that in a matter of months, is a huge change.

On the other hand, the group I trust the most for food safety is CSPI; we used to get their newsletter in the '90s, and I read the site sometimes, and they aren't anti-GMO; they are against a lot of unhealthy ingredients, such as sodium and artificial dyes in food among other things, but not that. And as far as food goes there certainly are plenty of things I'd worry about more than GMOs, but still, with how new the field is, there's no way we know every possible danger.

But even if they are maybe safe to eat, there are other serious issues with GMOs -- as I said before any GM product which exists to make it easier to douse the thing in pesticides is horrible! It increases pesticide usage, which then moves up the food chain into us, doing harm. And on top of that, it ties farmers into a bad cycle of having to buy seeds from Monsanto every year, instead of just being able to use their own... bad stuff.

No one's fearing cancer by taking a hot bath, so it's unlikely this is a major concern

http://time.com/4369809/very-hot-coffee-...-says-who/ :p (Yes, I know, not very similar. But what you said made me think of this.)

As for wireless signals and health, I know most but not all studies show no links between cellphones and cancer. It seems like it might not be a problem, but it's still a "might". And as with anything, many studies are useless industry-funded things; those will never be reliable, of course. "Considering how many people use the things now we sure hope we won't have a big problem here in a few decades" probably sums it up?

[Weltall]

So it's new and not totally understood... so we should just believe Monsanto and let whatever get into the food supply, even though it's as you say not entirely understood? The first and second halves of your last sentence make little sense together. Going from taking a very long time to slowly turn one plant into something else, to doing that in a matter of months, is a huge change.

Of course not. But a label stating that GMOs are in a product teaches the consumer nothing about the effects of genetic modification. It explains nothing. It just scares people into thinking that they'll grow extra arms if they eat Lance crackers. And of course, consumers don't want to read an explanation on the side of their food containers, or wouldn't even if it was there. So what's the actual good being done here? What's the point of awareness without any actual effort made to introduce understanding?

This isn't just a peeve, either. If people become terrified of GMOs like this, it could seriously disrupt the field and many potential benefits may be lost.

GMO labeling is just a real life version of the dihydrogen monoxide meme. People fall for it all the time because dihydrogen monoxide sounds like some flesh-eating industrial chemical and they don't bother trying to learn anything about it, so they write Congress and ask for a ban on water.

But even if they are maybe safe to eat, there are other serious issues with GMOs -- as I said before any GM product which exists to make it easier to douse the thing in pesticides is horrible! It increases pesticide usage, which then moves up the food chain into us, doing harm.

Mature GMOs would be designed such that pesticides would not be necessary, the plants (in this case) would be made to repel pests on their own.

And on top of that, it ties farmers into a bad cycle of having to buy seeds from Monsanto every year, instead of just being able to use their own... bad stuff.

This is the most frustrating thing about the conversation for me. People conflate a specific corporation with the entire concept of genetically modifying food organisms. It's like calling for a ban on all restaurants just because some of them are filthy and poorly run.

http://time.com/4369809/very-hot-coffee-...-says-who/ :p (Yes, I know, not very similar. But what you said made me think of this.)

Bring on cancer then, I fucking love coffee. Besides, I smoke enough kush to never have cancer. Or so some people say.

As for wireless signals and health, I know most but not all studies show no links between cellphones and cancer. It seems like it might not be a problem, but it's still a "might". And as with anything, many studies are useless industry-funded things; those will never be reliable, of course. "Considering how many people use the things now we sure hope we won't have a big problem here in a few decades" probably sums it up?

In a couple of decades people probably won't even remember what cancer is without looking it up.

[Weltall]

Thread title seems extra relevant these days.

[Dark Jaguar]

I honestly can't understand Trump supporters. I'm not proud of this at all. I usually am able to understand the "other side" of things. I may not agree with them, may see their ideas as harmful, but I can at least see why they believe what they believe and why they support who they support. I can get into the head space of people who support their own oppressive dictatorship, but I can't get into the head of a Trump supporter. I totally understand the mind of a Bush supporter, or supporters of the other popular republican candidates this time around, but Trump supporters escape me.

This is likely a result of limited world experience. I know Bush supporters and have lived with Bush supporters. They're like me, middle class Americans with middle class American concerns. Trump supporters though, they tend to come from harsher backgrounds and most notably from a background that completely lacks any political knowledge. Trump speaks "like they do", apparently.

Here's the thing that confuses me the most. How can anyone look at Trump on stage, claiming that he's "the best" at everything from the military to "knowing the system", and not immediately see it as empty boasting? He sounds like a Saturday Night Live character from the 80's. Specifically this one: , only if the character honestly believed everything they said while they were making it up. I mean, everything Trump says is instantly unbelievable the moment he says it as a clear product of a narcissistic mind. HOW does anyone believe otherwise?

Then I remember one thing. E-mail scams still find marks every day. Those little ads at the bottom of web pages advertising "one weird trick" with a picture of someone lifting up a single letter key off a keyboard get people to click on them and presumably buy something. Credit scamming phone calls get people to fall for them every day. There's a sizable group of people out there who, for whatever reason, never learned the signs that something was too good to be true. Yes, if you or me had someone come up to our door giving us a huge story about how they lost their parents to sharks and just need to sell a few flower pots to get through mime college, we'd know exactly what situation we're in, but these poor unfortunate souls never got the education to see through a scam when they saw it. I personally don't see how that could be, until I realize that the poorer someone is, the more likely it is that they probably never even had a working television growing up, much less internet access outside the occasional trip to the library. I'm living a sheltered life, because my day to day experience doesn't put me in contact with people that disadvantaged, but they've been there all along, and their ignorance is exactly what lets Trump get away with such outrageous claims. Of course, even saying this comes off as a blatant insult, like I'm better than they are, but I know for a fact that with a few minor changes in my history, I'd have grown up the same way. I still can't really get into their head space, but I can at least start to understand why someone might not have the mental tools needed to see through it.

The key to democracy is a well educated public. Trump's popularity is the ultimate proof we've failed. Many people have suggested a "common sense" class in school, and while that exact phrasing leaves a lot to be desired, I'm starting to think something like that with a bit more specific a definition on what common sense is wouldn't be a bad idea. Namely, a class on how to spot frauds and hucksters, how to weed out spam e-mails, and how to think critically about claims one sees or hears. I mean, there are "logic classes", but they're focused on general fallacies and critical thinking methods that are completely divorced from real world example. Tying it into the real world with actual situations the kids might run into would cement that knowledge and make it "real" for the kids. Also, those logic classes aren't required learning in school.

On the topic of GMOs, I'm certainly in favor of making DNA nonpatentable. That creates massive ethical issues the moment someone is born with a patented gene, and even more when that person decides to have a kid. Frankly, I don't believe genes will be patentable for long though. Also, it removes the pressure to make something unique just for the sake of having it in a patent folder. Genetic engineering needs a lot of pressure to make sure it's getting done for only the best intentions. Greed can't be a controlling factor.

Monsanto is a rather unscrupulous organization ABF, and certainly it's worthwhile to fear them being in control. However, genetically modifying things isn't owned by Monsanto. Lots of companies and organizations are doing it.

Weltall, I am not nearly as confident as you are that cancer will be eliminated in 20 years. For one thing, "cancer" isn't one disease but a vast family of diseases. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the human body (and other animal bodies) are ridiculously complicated. The sheer scope of the interdependence of the billions and billions of chain reactions all occurring simultaneously is so high that it is no wonder those world health reports can say, at best "this thing seems to show corrolation with this". There's not even an attempt at establishing a mechanism in that report, because mechaninisms when it comes to cellular activity are just THAT complicated. I've said it before, but while someone can describe a STAR with incredible precision using just some math, cellular chemical reactions are too complicated to be broken down into a few lines of math (the act of breaking the math down instantly makes it inaccurate due to how much depends on even the smallest bit). It's the same with weather, in fact. This quality is what chaos theory is all about. Our bodies, and our brains, are fundamentally "chaotic", not in the sense that it's completely disorganized and disordered, but in the mathematical sense of being totally indescribable without knowing the exact positions of every last bit of the system. Cancer operates on THAT level of the body. In practical terms, just about every cancer is a unique and special cancer, deserving a participation ribbon. While science has made great strides in treatments that can't be ignored, essentially, the only cure for all cancer is getting rid of the thing responsible, biology. Most of our bodies could probably be replaced with far simpler technology, but our brains, the only part that really matters, would be the single sticking point. I can see us as a species going the route of brains in robot bodies, but that last step of "digitizing" a mind is just as hard as the incredible challenge of cancer. Our brains, being chaotic systems, can't be reduced to a simple mathematical model either. That's not to say that a simulation couldn't do it. It's me saying the actual digitization itself would need to be able to figure out what information it needed to copy and what could be safely ignored. There is, as of now, no way to actually figure that out. Near as can be told, every last bit of chemical interaction is just as fundamentally important as the next, so "all of it" would need to be copied and simulated, and the simulation would need to be fine grained enough to simulate brain interaction at the level of individual molecules, rather than just the neural pathways, since again we don't know what we can leave out of the simulation. This is potentially doable, but how do you "copy" a brain state to that degree, exactly? Every last method we can conceive of would destroy the brain in the process, and further would destroy the brain before the data could actually be copied. Further, once you get down to the level of individual molecules, quantum mechanics start to kick in, and mere Brownian motion becomes a challenge. We don't have the technology to copy a brain, and probably never WILL have a way to do so non-destructively. Quantum effects at the level of precision we'd need even prevent a full description of the brain as a matter of physical law. (THANKS uncertainly principle! You've ruined it for the rest of us!) The "hard problem" of philosophy has become the "hard problem" of neuroscience. We're shackled to these blasted meat bags until the day we die, and even with a robot body replacing most of it, that sack of protein in our robo-head still has a finite lifespan.

Now, I'm a bit more hopeful than the biology professors who've painstakingly explained these difficulties to me, in that I do believe there MAY yet be a way to overcome these limitations, but based on what I've been taught, I don't believe that's 20 years away, but more like 200. I've come to terms with the dawning realization that the BEST I can hope for is life lengthening treatments that MIGHT let me live to see 200, and much more likely, that yes, I'm going to suffer the same doom as everyone that came before me. I can't be too angry. If we're lucky, our generation might be the last to die, but die we almost certainly will.

ABF, I want to add one more thing. That "might" is not worth worrying about. If it was, scientists would say as much. Fearing that all the telecos are funding the reports and controlling them is nothing but paranoia of the same kind that brings us doubt about vaccines and global warming (think of all those "follow the money" people). It's not the funding you should look at, but the methodology. Yes, it IS okay to trust science funded by a major company. Funding itself doesn't corrupt science, so long as everything's fully published and peer reviewed. Further, there's reproducibility. There really doesn't appear to be anything to worry about when it comes to cell phones, and you can go on living your life under that expectation.

[Dark Jaguar]

Dang it Hillary, Henry?! You're chumming up with Henry "here's how you commit war crimes without complaints" Kissinger?

Ack! Just when I was starting to actually get enthusiastic about the platform policy, you go and do something like this. If it's as bad as people are suggesting (and that remains to be seen just yet), it's enough to put me in the "anybody but Hillary" camp....


...

In four years...

This is why having only one choice is bad. When Trump is "yelling at a baby" terrible, and the other candidates are so vanishingly insignificant that my own state won't even recognize them as options, it means the democratic candidate can do whatever she wants with barely any consequences. The republican party is imploding, and I for one am okay with that (and I'd also be okay with a rational, humanistic republican party rising from the ashes), but we've got to have real choices here. This is why I can't ever really get on board with claiming a party alliance too. My previous decision stands. Hillary is, of the two, far more likely to get policies in place that align with my values than Trump. It's just that this is a reminder that it'll very likely only be a few things, and I'm starting to think that the health care "public option" won't be one of those things after all (it'll get toned down into yet another expansion that, while it'll help some, doesn't quite cover the people closest to me). In four years, when Trump is flatly denied a rerun in the republican party, I'll be taking a good long look at what else is out there. With any luck, some serious shake-ups will occur by then.

I've voted for a lot of reasons, but this will be the first election where my vote amounts to a stay of execution. In some ways literally, if Trump's questions about why we don't use nukes more often to solve our problems is any indication. From the heights of hope to the pits of despair. And ABF wonders why Bernie supporters were so adamant....

[Weltall]

TRUMP: Why don't we use nukes more often to solve our problems?
CLINTON: Because defense contractor donors don't make as much money as with conventional explosives and small arms.
SANDERS: War should only ever be fought as a last resort.
STEIN: War should never be fought for any reason whatsoever.
JOHNSON: Everybody should have their own nukes if they want to because freedom.

[Dark Jaguar]

That portrayal of Johnson seems familiar...



In spite of it all, even your caricature of Clinton is preferable to your caricature of Trump. Depressing...

[A Black Falcon]

Thread title seems extra relevant these days.

Yeah, aren't they all having so much fun dealing with his scattershot insanity?

Seriously though, at first I was scared for America because of his authoritarianism, but now his pro-Russian foreign policy agenda is just as, or more, worrying than that. It's so insane that the "we hate Reds" party now has a Presidential candidate with explicitly pro-Putin advisers and foreign policy positions!

Of course not. But a label stating that GMOs are in a product teaches the consumer nothing about the effects of genetic modification. It explains nothing. It just scares people into thinking that they'll grow extra arms if they eat Lance crackers. And of course, consumers don't want to read an explanation on the side of their food containers, or wouldn't even if it was there. So what's the actual good being done here? What's the point of awareness without any actual effort made to introduce understanding?

This isn't just a peeve, either. If people become terrified of GMOs like this, it could seriously disrupt the field and many potential benefits may be lost.

GMO labeling is just a real life version of the dihydrogen monoxide meme. People fall for it all the time because dihydrogen monoxide sounds like some flesh-eating industrial chemical and they don't bother trying to learn anything about it, so they write Congress and ask for a ban on water.

I think that we allow chemicals into products without requiring full testing -- that there is far too much of a presumption of safety where there should be the opposite -- is a problem. Similarly, GMOs should be proven safe before being used... and yes, there have been some studies showing that for at least some GMOs, but generally the FDA is in the pocket of big food and chemical companies and does not do the job it should at protecting peoples' health.

Mature GMOs would be designed such that pesticides would not be necessary, the plants (in this case) would be made to repel pests on their own.

Yeah, I'm sure none of those ways possibly could create any possible issues... but anyway, so far GMO use has only increased pesticide usage in this country, not decreased it.

This is the most frustrating thing about the conversation for me. People conflate a specific corporation with the entire concept of genetically modifying food organisms. It's like calling for a ban on all restaurants just because some of them are filthy and poorly run.

Don't kid yourself, Monsanto is the massively dominant player here. You cannot separate them from GMOs, it's impossible. They dominate the field.

Bring on cancer then, I fucking love coffee. Besides, I smoke enough kush to never have cancer. Or so some people say.

I try to stay away from addictive substances... other than videogames and ice cream, that is. :p (I've never cared for coffee, and have never drank it much at all.)

In a couple of decades people probably won't even remember what cancer is without looking it up.

That is quite highly optimistic.

Dang it Hillary, Henry?! You're chumming up with Henry "here's how you commit war crimes without complaints" Kissinger?

Ack! Just when I was starting to actually get enthusiastic about the platform policy, you go and do something like this. If it's as bad as people are suggesting (and that remains to be seen just yet), it's enough to put me in the "anybody but Hillary" camp....


...

In four years...

This is why having only one choice is bad. When Trump is "yelling at a baby" terrible, and the other candidates are so vanishingly insignificant that my own state won't even recognize them as options, it means the democratic candidate can do whatever she wants with barely any consequences. The republican party is imploding, and I for one am okay with that (and I'd also be okay with a rational, humanistic republican party rising from the ashes), but we've got to have real choices here. This is why I can't ever really get on board with claiming a party alliance too. My previous decision stands. Hillary is, of the two, far more likely to get policies in place that align with my values than Trump. It's just that this is a reminder that it'll very likely only be a few things, and I'm starting to think that the health care "public option" won't be one of those things after all (it'll get toned down into yet another expansion that, while it'll help some, doesn't quite cover the people closest to me). In four years, when Trump is flatly denied a rerun in the republican party, I'll be taking a good long look at what else is out there. With any luck, some serious shake-ups will occur by then.

I've voted for a lot of reasons, but this will be the first election where my vote amounts to a stay of execution. In some ways literally, if Trump's questions about why we don't use nukes more often to solve our problems is any indication. From the heights of hope to the pits of despair. And ABF wonders why Bernie supporters were so adamant....

What are you talking about with Kissinger? I haven't heard of anything new. But from months back, Hillary has said moderately positive things about Kissinger before. Remember how this became an issue in one of the debates with Bernie, when she said something like that and then got hit for it since Kissinger is, of course, an unindicted war criminal (because of the Vietnam War) we should not be listening to? She partially walked that back, but it was an issue for a bit. Now, her excuse pretty much was that she listens to a lot of people, and her positive statements about Kissenger focus maybe entirely on how he helped open China up to the West (and that was indeed a very important and positive thing!), but I agree that she's nowhere near as hard on him as she should be. It's harder to be hard on someone you know personally, as she does Kissinger, than it is for people who do not know him to say how awful he was, though, I will admit that.

Here's an article about the controversy from the debate in February - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book...-loved-it/

... As for this new thing, is it just the rumor that she may be looking for his endorsement, along with other Republicans who have refused to endorse Trump? http://www.jta.org/2016/08/09/news-opini...g-the-left I doubt many of those Republicans will endorse her, so don't look for it to happen. On a related note, one of my senators, Susan Collins, just released an op-ed saying that she will not vote for Trump, but she also says she won't be voting for Hillary either... that's the more likely path, rather than major Republican Party figures, like Kissinger sadly is, actually saying "we will vote for Hillary". (But if Kissinger did vote for Hillary... well, with how much Trump likes Russia, who'd blame him? It wouldn't be a sign that she is a warmonger, just that she is sane and believes in America's alliances and democracy, things Trump clearly does not care much about. In a normal situation I would be upset about the idea of her looking to Kissinger in any way, he's horrible overall regardless of the good he did in our relationship with China, but this is not a normal situation.)

[Dark Jaguar]

Everything that exists is a chemical ABF. Food IS chemicals. Sorry to say that if you are already aware, but a large number of Americans get their dietary information from daytime TV and seem to think "chemicals" only refer to stuff scientists created by sheer force of will in a lab.

Also, "organic" generally is just another word for "carbon based", but that's obviously not how a lot of people use the term. The problem is, the term as generally used has no coherent definition! In fact, the FDA has basically not been able to find any definition that is in any way logical and thus hasn't really defined it themselves. The same applies to the term "natural".

"Artisinal" is a cute one. It's literally a synonym for "artificial". People forget that before artificial got all the stigma attached to it, it just meant "the product of an art", because it's got the word "art" right in there.

"Processed" is a tough one too. It just means "made by some sort of process", which applies to anything we have to prepare in some way before we eat it. At least there's a coherent definition there. An apple fresh off a tree is unprocessed, but if you cut it up and dip the pieces in caramel, it's processed. A recent study actually had to define what "processed" specifically referred to when they did a study on the effects of "processed meat". Specifically, for the purposes of the study, the processes in question were smoking, salting, and the use of preservatives. The study grouped all three of those processes into one, which is unfortunate, because I'd love to know which of those processes lead to the higher rates of cancer, but it was still helpful. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd probably say that "salting" is probably the least likely of the three to be the cancer agent, with "smoking" being the most likely (as we already know the dangers of breathing smoke, and ingesting it probably isn't much better). Since there are so many kinds of preservatives, that leaves them as a wild card that could go either way. Heck, honey makes a good (and tasty) preservative.

I'm not just being pedantic here, as so many people I point this stuff out to try to tell me. Having coherent definitions for these health terms is a must, and many of them lack that, so how can those terms be in any way useful in getting healthy?

People do need to eat healthier, and it's clear that there's a lot of additives in modern food that are causing harm. That's clear because many countries have already banned it due to conclusions of the WHO, but the FDA is generally far slower in banning things like the yellow die used in our cheese (I'm totally okay with cheese looking white if it means getting rid of the known harm of that specific yellow food die). The truth is, there are no easy rules of thumb when it comes to health. Those who want to be health conscious can't just come up with something simple like "carbs are the enemy" (we actually need carbohydrates to live). It'll require for people to learn a LOT, or to push the government to give the FDA a bit more power to enforce their recommendations, but most people don't want the latter, and most people also don't want to be told they need to read vast dry tomes of scientific literature when Dr. Oz can just tell them some simple easy to digest rule of thumb. It also doesn't help that the media is full of pop-diet fad pushers banking on the public's ignorance to sell their latest gimmick.

So anyway, yes, I'm specifically talking about Hillary's attempt to secure an endorsement from Kissinger. Exactly who is she trying to reach out for, and why? It's entirely the wrong direction for her campaign to go in! Stop trying to win over the bible thumping war-monger crowd and focus on keeping your base! There's not even a reason to try and win over people who are almost certainly going to vote for Trump anyway, because Trump is losing! What it DOES do is alienate the progressive side yet again by showing that she doesn't care how it looks because she takes the progressive vote as a "given". (And why shouldn't she? Look at her opponent, the least qualified candidate in American history perhaps, but I don't know, you tell me.) I used to think of Kissinger as a funny celebrity cameo on Futurama, but now I realize just how much evil he was responsible for. That is NOT the sort of "reaching across the isle" that helps anyone. You don't court with evil like that. You repudiate it. She doesn't need him!

And yet, at the same time, Trump has just stated that Hillary being able to nominate a supreme court judge (as prescribed by the constitution) is "dangerous" and can't be stopped, but second amendment people might have a solution for that, I don't know, you tell me. So, he's whistling out there banking on some random extremist hearing the call and setting up a rifle on a grassy knoll. Also, I am pretty sure Putin is using him. Not that Trump's aware of it, but Putin just calls him every now and then to compliment him and his ego takes care of the rest.

[Dark Jaguar]

Everyone in the media is calling the past week or two "Trump's meltdown". What a weird way to frame it. Trump isn't doing anything now that he hasn't already been doing his ENTIRE campaign. He's been just as insane from the day he came down to earth on a golden escalator and said all (excuse me, most) Mexicans are rapists. Further, his base is defending every single thing he's said in the past few weeks just as much as they have every other thing he's said, and they mean it.

However, and this is important, Trump dropping his campaign would be terrible for the democrats. Hillary can beat Trump easily for the same reason literally any democratic candidate could beat Trump easily. Trump is Trump. Hillary may seem to have a new scandal every month, but Trump says something worse every single day, enough to make me forget about whatever Hillary did (I think she sent some e-mail to a Nigerian prince or something?). However, I'd be hard pressed to see anyone take an "anybody but Cruz" stance to the same degree. (I'm pretty sure since he came in second, he'd get the nomination, unless they had to do a second primary vote across the country, I'm not sure about their party rules.) Sure, Ted Cruz lacks that conscious he was telling republicans to vote with (psychopaths are aware of feelings like guilt at least, they just think of it as some "bad feeling" like pain or disgust), but he at least acts like a president, so mostly he'd just be killing his political opponents, not everyday citizens. Anyway, the democrats have to know they've basically been handed the presidency on a silver platter with Trump, so they better hope he doesn't manage to get himself arrested between now and the election.

[A Black Falcon]

I honestly can't understand Trump supporters. I'm not proud of this at all. I usually am able to understand the "other side" of things. I may not agree with them, may see their ideas as harmful, but I can at least see why they believe what they believe and why they support who they support. I can get into the head space of people who support their own oppressive dictatorship, but I can't get into the head of a Trump supporter. I totally understand the mind of a Bush supporter, or supporters of the other popular republican candidates this time around, but Trump supporters escape me.

This is likely a result of limited world experience. I know Bush supporters and have lived with Bush supporters. They're like me, middle class Americans with middle class American concerns. Trump supporters though, they tend to come from harsher backgrounds and most notably from a background that completely lacks any political knowledge. Trump speaks "like they do", apparently.

Here's the thing that confuses me the most. How can anyone look at Trump on stage, claiming that he's "the best" at everything from the military to "knowing the system", and not immediately see it as empty boasting? He sounds like a Saturday Night Live character from the 80's. Specifically this one:

I can't understand the appeal he has either, but the core of his support isn't just poorer people; it's also the white middle and lower middle classes. It's people who see how they aren't doing as well as their parents were, that so many jobs have gone overseas, that America is slowly becoming a less anglo-white nation, etc., and fall for someone offering "solutions" that blame all of America's problems on minorities and liberals. Of course, the actual end result would be Republican economic policies which would help big business even more and continue the downward slide of the American middle class, because those jobs aren't coming back, but people don't care to actually read up on things, they just believe it because it's easy or something. Economically, at its core, It's yet another example of that classic "What's the Matter with Kansas" problem, just here with explicit racism as a core part of the appeal, instead of "just" hating abortion, gays, etc. And yes, it is sad that people are so incurious, that they'd rather stay in a conservative echo chamber than look at if there is any truth to anything that echo chamber is saying.

Everyone in the media is calling the past week or two "Trump's meltdown". What a weird way to frame it. Trump isn't doing anything now that he hasn't already been doing his ENTIRE campaign. He's been just as insane from the day he came down to earth on a golden escalator and said all (excuse me, most) Mexicans are rapists. Further, his base is defending every single thing he's said in the past few weeks just as much as they have every other thing he's said, and they mean it.

However, and this is important, Trump dropping his campaign would be terrible for the democrats. Hillary can beat Trump easily for the same reason literally any democratic candidate could beat Trump easily. Trump is Trump. Hillary may seem to have a new scandal every month, but Trump says something worse every single day, enough to make me forget about whatever Hillary did (I think she sent some e-mail to a Nigerian prince or something?).

Yeah, Trump has been saying stuff just as bad as any of this all along... but people pay more attention to presidential campaigns once the conventions roll around. That's the biggest difference here, that Trump is saying this stuff to a national audience that is actually starting to pay attention, instead of only to the core base of people who follow politics closely.

However, I'd be hard pressed to see anyone take an "anybody but Cruz" stance to the same degree. (I'm pretty sure since he came in second, he'd get the nomination, unless they had to do a second primary vote across the country, I'm not sure about their party rules.) Sure, Ted Cruz lacks that conscious he was telling republicans to vote with (psychopaths are aware of feelings like guilt at least, they just think of it as some "bad feeling" like pain or disgust), but he at least acts like a president, so mostly he'd just be killing his political opponents, not everyday citizens. Anyway, the democrats have to know they've basically been handed the presidency on a silver platter with Trump, so they better hope he doesn't manage to get himself arrested between now and the election.

If Trump were to officially withdraw from the Presidential race, which I don't think is something his ego will allow (and there's no way to get him out without him withdrawing, the Republican Party can't just get rid of him on their own), the party itself would probably pick a nominee, I guess? It'd be an unprecedented situation, so they probably would be making up the rules as they went along. So it may be Cruz, but it'd probably be more likely to be someone like Paul Ryan or something... and yeah, just about any normal Republican would be a much stronger opponent. I do think Hillary would still win, but it'd be a real race, even starting at this late date. Fortunately for us though, I don't think it's going to happen.

So anyway, yes, I'm specifically talking about Hillary's attempt to secure an endorsement from Kissinger. Exactly who is she trying to reach out for, and why? It's entirely the wrong direction for her campaign to go in! Stop trying to win over the bible thumping war-monger crowd and focus on keeping your base! There's not even a reason to try and win over people who are almost certainly going to vote for Trump anyway, because Trump is losing! What it DOES do is alienate the progressive side yet again by showing that she doesn't care how it looks because she takes the progressive vote as a "given". (And why shouldn't she? Look at her opponent, the least qualified candidate in American history perhaps, but I don't know, you tell me.) I used to think of Kissinger as a funny celebrity cameo on Futurama, but now I realize just how much evil he was responsible for. That is NOT the sort of "reaching across the isle" that helps anyone. You don't court with evil like that. You repudiate it. She doesn't need him!

Hillary has added Georgia and Arizona to her battleground-states list, and just wrote an op-ed in the Mormon church-owned paper in Utah. She's aiming for a broad anti-Trump coalition, which is achievable if polling continues to go the way it is right now. And a big win would be good because the bigger the win, hopefully the bigger the coat-tails! I really, really want to win the Senate back...

This doesn't mean she can take liberals for granted of course, she most certainly cannot, and she should not make any kind of public appeal to Kissinger, have any event with him even if he did endorse, etc. And I'd rather if she didn't make a private appeal either; despite his success in opening China I can't stand Kissinger for the awful things he did. But so long as her opponent is Trump, she does have an opportunity to expand on the traditional modern Democratic voting base.

[Dark Jaguar]

If Trump is arrested, he can't continue his campaign for president. They'd have no choice but to find someone else. Same thing if he dropped dead of a heart attack or spray-on tan poisoning or transplanted wig rejection. These are things that have always been possibilities in any candidacy, and is it really true that even in the era of gun duels, no presidential candidate has ever died before the election?

So near as I can tell, you agree with me on the Kissinger thing. That's what you were getting at with all that, right?

At any rate, I do NOT want to see her "try to expand the base" into right wing territory. Democrats ALWAYS try to do that, and it never works! All they do is alienate the progressive side when they try that.

[Dark Jaguar]

Lately, I've seen many Trump supporters defending his insanity through creative interpretation. "Cleary, what Trump ACTUALLY meant was that second amendment people are a big lobby with a lot of power."

Well, Trump recently revealed he's not that deep. He's claimed that Obama is the founder of Isis. In a recent interview, he was given an out when the interviewer said "I get what you meant by that, which is that Obama created the political climate that allowed Isis to come into being" (never mind that this is certainly false, and if anyone's to blame it was Bush Jr.). Trump removed all doubt by responding that no, that is NOT what he meant, and he meant exactly what he said, that Obama is literally the founder of Isis.

[Dark Jaguar]

Now, I think Hillary is going to win, but the very fact that Trump is even a contender, one who's name crosses my mind (against my will) on a daily basis at this point means that the whole "you can't win a campaign without investing millions on televised ads" thing has just been broken. By Trump.

Trump has spent exactly nothing on TV ads. Not a dime. He doesn't have to. All he has to do is say "hey, I want to say something" and news networks give their air time to him free of charge. They've been doing it since long before Trump even ran for President.

Ignore that my state doesn't bother with political ads for a second and think about what that means. In those states that ARE running ads for her, it doesn't matter! Trump supporters are still going surprisingly strong, and he hasn't run ad 1!

This could be the death of utterly depending on millions of dollars of ad revenue in order to win elections, and I would welcome it. The only thing threatening it is both parties deciding "nah, just a fluke, let's go BACK to the way things were and waste millions racing against each other on an increasingly failing advertising platform". I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in actual fact, the average person is basing their voting decisions on discussions on Tweeter and MyFace.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, for Trump specifically, this ad-free campaign has worked fairly well because of the vast amounts of free press he gets. But while things are changing due to the internet, cellphones, etc., I don't think that this is a sign that ad campaigns are going away, because I don't know if anyone else would be able to get the amounts of free press Trump has. You can't just be a hateful person saying horrible things, you need to already have a name for yourself to get this volume of press, after all! Trump is, obviously, quite famous outside of politics, more so than most presidential candidates are. So my thoughts are that while this campaign is sort of working for him, it wouldn't work for others and we will return to more "normal" campaigns after this year. If Trump loses badly, as he currently is in the polls, this outcome will become even more likely.

Lately, I've seen many Trump supporters defending his insanity through creative interpretation. "Cleary, what Trump ACTUALLY meant was that second amendment people are a big lobby with a lot of power."

Well, Trump recently revealed he's not that deep. He's claimed that Obama is the founder of Isis. In a recent interview, he was given an out when the interviewer said "I get what you meant by that, which is that Obama created the political climate that allowed Isis to come into being" (never mind that this is certainly false, and if anyone's to blame it was Bush Jr.). Trump removed all doubt by responding that no, that is NOT what he meant, and he meant exactly what he said, that Obama is literally the founder of Isis.

Trump has an amazing capacity for lying repeatedly without ever seeming to recognize he's changing his positions every five seconds and saying obvious falsehoods. So yeah, does he have the self-awareness to actually realize that he's lying, or that the things he is saying are not true? It is widely believed that he has narcissistic personality disorder, so that is a factor, but then on top of that he's never been the smartest person, and he had so much success with his unfiltered idiocy that he just isn't able to turn from that to something that general election audiences will accept. So, he just keeps saying insanely horrible things, either because he literally can't help himself because of some mental issues, because he's too bored with the concept of being a "normal candidate" to be willing to stick to it because he prefers saying crazy things and getting a rise out of crowds as a result (I think this is fairly obviously true!), or because of the unlikely conspiracy theory that his whole campaign is a sabotage job against the Republican Party. It's one of those. I believe the second is the most likely, myself, but the ways his speeches ramble and randomly jump from one topic to another is so hard to follow that it does make you wonder about is mental state...

If Trump is arrested, he can't continue his campaign for president. They'd have no choice but to find someone else. Same thing if he dropped dead of a heart attack or spray-on tan poisoning or transplanted wig rejection. These are things that have always been possibilities in any candidacy, and is it really true that even in the era of gun duels, no presidential candidate has ever died before the election?

I can't think of any Presidential candidate who actually died before the election, but it has happened before in Senate races and lower. What happens in those cases depends on state law, generally. But yeah, Trump only goes away if he chooses to, I don't think the Republicans have any way now to get rid of him if he doesn't want to go. And even if he did withdraw, he'd leave a really tough race for his replacement, with how the Trump-supporting wing of their party would surely be very angry at the party for "forcing out Trump"...

So near as I can tell, you agree with me on the Kissinger thing. That's what you were getting at with all that, right?

I do not want her to ask for or accept his endorsement, but if he did publicly endorse her for whatever reason, it would have no effect on my certainty that I will vote for her. So I agree on your sentiment against Kissinger, but not on the "and it might affect my vote" part of your posts.

At any rate, I do NOT want to see her "try to expand the base" into right wing territory. Democrats ALWAYS try to do that, and it never works! All they do is alienate the progressive side when they try that.

If she can win over people in the center without actually changing any POLICIES towards the right, I'm all for her expanding things! We badly, badly need to win as many Senate seats as possible this year, to win the Senate back and then hopefully survive the probably very bad cycle that will be 2018 in the Senate where the Dems have to defend a lot of very difficult seats (Missouri, North Dakota, Montana, etc.), and the more states she does well in, the better a chance at that we have...

[A Black Falcon]

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.

[Dark Jaguar]

The news media, especially CNN, often invent a nonexistent "middle option" to create this illusion of that tired old "two sides to every story" canard. That's why you'll see so many "Trump once again gets attention with head turning remarks". They try to phrase it in such a way that it also comes across as a compliment. Everyone likes a rebel after all.

However, the House of Stewart, which is very much a part of the news media in spite of every last one of them protesting that, has certainly NOT gone down that road. They're still at it, pointing out that Trump is no more presidential than he was when he first descended to earth on a golden escalator. So, there's that. CNN is pretty terrible though. (Fox News is obviously terrible, I don't think I should have to point that out.) Let's face facts here though. No one's buying the false equivalence anyway. Trump supporters aren't watching the news (I believe I saw some poll that demonstrated that).

Then we get the hypocrisy. I'm not sure how much of it is sexism and how much of it is how unaware of history and how modern "cameras everywhere" media has changed how quickly this stuff gets uncovered, but Hillary's health has suddenly become a major issue. This isn't really that new. Leaders and rumors about their health go hand in hand back to the beginning of leadership. Plenty of leaders really HAVE had crippling illnesses they went out of their way to cover up since they knew how the public would see it, and Hillary is the latest in that trend. The only problem is everyone's acting like this is something brand new we haven't seen before, because no one seems to know about anything that happened in the world before 2001. Let's ignore the fact that Donald Trump looks like an undercooked ham with an obviously ridiculous doctor claiming he's the single healthiest specimen he's ever had the pleasure of examining. No, it's Hillary they're focusing on, and the various "experts" chiming in with complete nonsense so they can get their 15 minutes was laughable.

It didn't help finding out she actually was sick with the pneumonia, and she covered it up. Really the only major issue here is that the Clintons are known for their coverups, and this didn't help. Yes, it's happened plenty of times before, and this is no different in that respect, but it'd go a long way to helping their campaign if they started embracing full disclosure as a policy. I mean, there are cameras EVERYWHERE. There's literally no way trying to cover up being sick wouldn't be immediately uncovered.

At any rate, in spite of everything I just said, it's becoming very clear that having Trump as her rival was the BEST possible situation for her campaign. The way I'm seeing it, if literally any of the other candidates were running against Clinton right now, she would lose, and she'd lose because of all the problems her past has brought. It's only due to the complete toilet fire that is Trump that she is edging out a win. I mean, that win is pretty good odds at this point, but that it's even close is pretty sad. I'm still pretty sure that had Bernie been the nominee, the election would have been clinched against any of the other republican candidates. Well, it is what it is. Short of Clinton actually dying from the pnemones (which is about as likely as her stepping down of her own free will, because rich people are functionally immortal these days), that's not changing. I'm still going to dutifully tick that box, and hope for her good health, because frankly in spite of my issues with Hillary, her running mate would do basically nothing if it passed to that guy (seriously, that choice was ridiculous with two incredibly compelling options, but as forgettable as that guy is, he's certainly proven to be the "safest" choice).

[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.

[Dark Jaguar]

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.

This right here is exactly my problem with her. Clinton, by all rights, SHOULD be the progressive candidate that gets things done. However, she's got a track record of bending over backwards for backwards people. Corruption is the only word for it. That doesn't mean I think she's an evil money grubbing politician, it means that her values have been weathered away by a system rife with corruption. By that I mean that age old problem of trying to do the right thing, and in the process of trying to do that right thing, you compromise, because it seems like it's the only way to get it done. Time and time again, and now that corruption is so bad it's seeping out into the general populace, and getting average people to say "well, she lied but all politicians lie, I mean, that's just what they have to do to get the job done". Have we all as a people just given up on moral behavior? I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the general notion that sometimes it's better to fail in your objective than become the thing you hate. We USED to believe that. Heck, there's half a dozen Star Trek episodes where the captain would rather blow up their own ship than do something unethical, because it ALWAYS seems like a small sacrifice at the time, and it always turns out to be that road to hell.

Look, I'm going to vote for Clinton, because of all the things you said, but corruption is corruption, and while we don't have much in the way of a choice this time, I'm not seeing Hillary as being a two term president. She's not the first, but every time we make an argument like that, it just gets worse. At some point, a stand has to be taken, and as public as every little thing is this cycle, it's certainly going to be even worse the next. The democrats would be wise to not just automatically nominate her next time, I think.

But hey, I could be wrong. Clinton could turn her back on the corporate backers, and it would be glorious if she did so. She could be the president she dreamed of being when she was in her 20's, and I would welcome it. In 4 years, if she was behind a number of major pushes for progressive policies, even if they failed at the legislative level, I'd change my mind on her.

[A Black Falcon]

For both of you, the idea you have that Bernie would be doing better now than Hillary is is, in my opinion, very mistaken. Yes, she has made a few questionable moves recently, including deciding to spend August fundraising instead of appearing in public and hiding her illness because she just wanted to work through it, but it's hardly some disastrously messed up campaign, they're mostly doing a good job. I think your anti-Democratic Party perspectives skew your views here... yes, seeing her lead fade has been incredibly frustrating and maybe she could have done more, but I definitely put more of that blame on the press, and perhaps also the public at large, for giving Trump a pass because he's said so many horrendous things that people just stop paying attention to what he's saying. We will see this again today when there will probably be almost no reaction to his latest barely-coded call for someone to shoot Hillary. Poll numbers regardless, Trump should have been completely ruled out for any kind of serious anything long ago. But instead he gets mostly positive press because reporting on Trump helps the ratings.

But anyway, how would Bernie be doing? He'd be attacked harshly and unremittingly on all of the many things he could be attacked on but Hillary basically never mentioned. She treated Bernie very lightly on the major attack lines you could hit him for outside of the policy arena, but Trump would never do anything of the sort. He'd hit him hard on all sorts of issues, and it would hurt Bernie a LOT versus his theoretical policy positions. Sure, Bernie would have more enthusiasm from the liberal base, but he'd have less from the center, and you need both left and center to win. Sure, Trump is an extremist, but do you really think that so many centrist or Republican foreign policy people would be endorsing Bernie, for example? I don't think so. So, the result of a Bernie v. Trump race would be that the third parties would probably be polling even HIGHER than they are now. I don't know what the end result would be, but there are fewer strong liberals in this country than strong conservatives last time I checked, so it probably would be not great for our side. And besides, if a motivated liberal base was really all you needed to win, Bernie would be the nominee right now! He isn't, because you need more than that. And anyway, there are major issues I think she is better on.

This right here is exactly my problem with her. Clinton, by all rights, SHOULD be the progressive candidate that gets things done. However, she's got a track record of bending over backwards for backwards people. Corruption is the only word for it. That doesn't mean I think she's an evil money grubbing politician, it means that her values have been weathered away by a system rife with corruption. By that I mean that age old problem of trying to do the right thing, and in the process of trying to do that right thing, you compromise, because it seems like it's the only way to get it done. Time and time again, and now that corruption is so bad it's seeping out into the general populace, and getting average people to say "well, she lied but all politicians lie, I mean, that's just what they have to do to get the job done". Have we all as a people just given up on moral behavior? I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the general notion that sometimes it's better to fail in your objective than become the thing you hate. We USED to believe that. Heck, there's half a dozen Star Trek episodes where the captain would rather blow up their own ship than do something unethical, because it ALWAYS seems like a small sacrifice at the time, and it always turns out to be that road to hell.

Look, I'm going to vote for Clinton, because of all the things you said, but corruption is corruption, and while we don't have much in the way of a choice this time, I'm not seeing Hillary as being a two term president. She's not the first, but every time we make an argument like that, it just gets worse. At some point, a stand has to be taken, and as public as every little thing is this cycle, it's certainly going to be even worse the next. The democrats would be wise to not just automatically nominate her next time, I think.

But hey, I could be wrong. Clinton could turn her back on the corporate backers, and it would be glorious if she did so. She could be the president she dreamed of being when she was in her 20's, and I would welcome it. In 4 years, if she was behind a number of major pushes for progressive policies, even if they failed at the legislative level, I'd change my mind on her.[/COLOR]

... What? Hillary is not corrupt. There has never been a shred of evidence that she's actually corrupt, there are just allegations that fall apart once you look at the details. Clinton Foundation pay-to-play? Nope, didn't happen. There were donors who wanted access but didn't get anything beyond what you'd expect people like them (often fairly prominent figures) to get, etc... but no actual corruption. This whole Clinton Foundation "scandal" is so messed up in the way the press has reported it, because their foundation is in the top tier as far as spending its money on the actual cause is concerned, etc. It's a model of how to run an effective charitable foundation. And yet the press spins it into a negative story about her because of things that are not true... it's frustrating, and is one of many reasons why Trump has improved in the polls recently.

And on that note, another reason is that as always, Trump gets a pass for doing infinitely worse things. Clinton is being wrongly accused of corruption and "pay-to-play"? Trump has a PROVEN RECORD of funding pay-to-play efforts, often successful! How did the Trump Foundation scandal, about how his "foundation" just uses other peoples' money and none from Trump himself since 2008, how he pays off elected officials with money from his foundation to get them to not investigate some of his other crimes, etc. The Pam Bondi "I illegally give you this money so you don't investigate me" scandal is the most obvious example of this of course! Sure, the press reported on it, but so many reports focused far more on Hillary's not-actually-corruption "scandal" than on Trump's proven, factual record of actual corruption. It's pretty awful stuff.

Now, yes, I know, you mean "corruption" more generally, in that you seem to consider all donations corrupt. But you need PROOF to say that donations cause corruption, and nothing in Hillary's emails or record provides ANY support for that! It's more like the opposite, as far as I have seen. Hillary does have an unfortunate tendency to be a bit too secretive, as you see with her hiding her illness because she just wanted to work through it, but she is not corrupt. Trump is.

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.

Clinton will be good, not just "not as bad". Also comparing Daily Kos to Breitbart is totally absurd! Yes, it's a Democratic echo chamber, but Breitbart is a far-right extremists' haven, with all kinds of incredibly disgusting articles there. You don't see that on liberal sites like Daily Kos.

However, I do agree with the core of your complaint here, that the Democratic Party doesn't do a good job of pushing its agenda or pushing back against the Republicans. This is a tough issue, though -- even if it's often frustrating, is it really a good idea to go down closer to their level? But on the other hand, the Democrats historically are weak on pushing for their policies compared to the Republicans, and that is a consistent source of frustration. The Republicans seem to instinctively push, while Democrats instinctively back off and refuse to follow a tougher line because we're too nice to behave that rudely... which makes it hard to get your policies through when the other party IS behaving that way. This is why almost all of the gerrymandering in this country is Republican-leaning, etc.

So, what do you do? I do wish that the real solution would be for the Republicans to stop behaving terribly, or at least to put more laws in place to stop their worst abuses (gerrymandering, etc.). But how do you get to that point without acting horrendously as their party has? The idea probably is something in between, being tougher than Democrats often are but refusing to emulate the terrible idiocy their party has descended to. (On a related note, while she's far from perfect, Hillary's fairly tough as far as Democrats go.)

[Dark Jaguar]

I'm not so sure this "you need the center to win" thing is as true as you think. There's less of a center now than there's ever been, and the center itself has a lot more subdivisions.

But, here's the thing to fear.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016...id=rrpromo

Yes, the predicted winner has gone down to nearly a coin flip. Can you honestly say that Trump's attacks on Bernie would be so devastating that he'd actually do WORSE than Hillary right now?

I also want to be very clear. When I say Hillary is corrupt, I'm not picturing her sitting in an evil lair plotting her own success at the expense of everyone else. I'm picturing what actual corruption looks like. Innocent idealistic morals slowly being eroded away all in the name of that real change you still want to bring, but you've kinda lost the way without even realizing it. That's what I mean by corruption.

[A Black Falcon]

While there is less of a center than ever, I don't think a Democrat could win in the general election without appealing to moderates, considering the growing numbers of unenrolled people in this country and the Republican Party's larger loyal voting base (see: off-year elections).

es, the predicted winner has gone down to nearly a coin flip.

While on 538 this is true, the site is actually something of an outlier within the major election prediction sites -- none of the others show Trump's chance of winning nearly as high as they do. It is true that things have narrowed significantly over the past couple of weeks, and while there are multiple reasons for this I do think the press has a role, but there is good reason to believe that this trend has stopped -- I don't think Trump is still gaining in the most recent polling, and some polls have shown good numbers for Hillary recently. The press also has turned to a much more critical line on Trump recently, thanks to his lies about Hillary starting the Obama birth certificate thing, the Trump Foundation scandal, etc. I'm sure none of that will have any effect on his diehard supporters, but it should help at the edges.

Can you honestly say that Trump's attacks on Bernie would be so devastating that he'd actually do WORSE than Hillary right now?

Yes. Hillary has a larger core support base than Bernie does, after all. Higher floor. And there were serious attack lines against Bernie that surely would have been used in a general. Hillary has those too of course, but he was hardly someone who nobody could have made effective attack ads against if they wanted...

I also want to be very clear. When I say Hillary is corrupt, I'm not picturing her sitting in an evil lair plotting her own success at the expense of everyone else. I'm picturing what actual corruption looks like. Innocent idealistic morals slowly being eroded away all in the name of that real change you still want to bring, but you've kinda lost the way without even realizing it. That's what I mean by corruption.

Corrupt is Donald Trump paying off Pam Bondi and others to not charge him after he commits criminal offenses. He has repeatedly bragged about how he gives people money and then expects things from them in return, and this is an example of that in action. And he hasn't stopped there! Trump has even committed criminal, and probably also corrupt, acts when he used other peoples' money (in his foundation) to pay off legal settlements, money he supposedly "donated himself" to people who won money on his TV shows, and more.etc.

And such. Seriously, how is Hillary corrupt? What is your proof? Just because she takes money from businesses, banks, etc. she is not corrupt. There is some inherent unfairness in the system, sure, as people with more money get more access due to their having that money, but I don't think it's right to call the whole system corrupt because of that. The Clinton Foundation "scandal" is a non-scandal for exactly this reason, there is zero evidence anyone actually got actual policy changes from Hillary because of giving the Clinton Foundation money. All the evidence I have seen goes in the opposite direction, in fact. And meanwhile the other candidate is not only corrupt, him and his top supporters publicly brag about his corruption. One of these things is not like the other... but even beyond anything relating to Trump, calling Hillary corrupt is not right when there is no proof it's true!

[Dark Jaguar]

Stop pointing out that Trump is more corrupt than Hillary. That isn't the debate we're having here, because I agree. How much more corrupt is Trump than Hillary?



That much more! I know! I SAID I'm voting for Hillary after all, but you can't possibly make me excited about the prospect.

As for "proof" she is corrupt, what exactly are you asking for? You must admit that standards of evidence for corrupt systems HAVE to change, or we'll never actually be able to conclude ANYONE is guilty of corruption. We're at a point in society were we don't need to actually convict a tenured professor in a court of law before deciding he's probably sexually harrassing people. A sufficient number of accusations are enough for us to basically say "where there's smoke there's fire". So look, the two big name Clinton scandals ended up with no proof, but you'd be a fool to not look at that plus all the contributions plus all the backroom connections and not at least tilt your head and go "hmmmmmmmmmm" really hard. Even if NONE of that actually is a result of bribes and backroom deals, a presidential candidate should know better than to do stuff that LOOKS that bad. This is a hard shift in my own positions, believe me, but I've realized that it's necessary, or we won't be able to judge half the things Trump himself does due to lack of any convictions in a court of law.

Now again, you ask me to point to any ONE example of concrete corruption on Hillary's part, and I would say to you "show me ONE example of a police officer shooting a black person due to racism". That's a question that misses the entire point, because the racism is revealed as systemic, and can't exactly be shown in singular examples. Better yet, "show me ONE high temperature day that's absolutely caused by global warming". The question itself is a major misunderstanding of what's being claimed. It's about trends, not zeroing in on exact instances. Hillary Clinton shows a distinct trend that sure rhymes with corruption, and if I had the choice, I'd pick a candidate who's background wasn't so eyebrow raising. That's for sure. Also, YES, I WILL say it again, the system IS corrupt! It's not irredeemable, it's not without good people trying to do good things and change stuff, but it suffers from systemic corruption, and the flat out normalization of behavior we shouldn't tolerate. I'm voting for a candidate I don't entirely trust, and the fact that we got here should be proof enough that there's some systemic issues that need working out, and calling it out for what it is is isn't the solution, but it's a necessary first step.

Listen, I'm not trying to argue that Trump is better, that's ridiculous. You don't need to tell me that Hillary is by FAR the better option. It's why I'm voting for her. She might actually do some real good, while Trump might send the military to dismantle the internet or something. What I'm trying to say is that if you're attempting to sell me on Hillary as not just the better candidate, but the best possible candidate, you're barking up the wrong tree. It'll take a LOT more to convince me of that, and bizarrely, I'm in the position where the proof that she's a great candidate will come AFTER I've voted for her.

[A Black Falcon]

If you want proof of corruption and intentional illegal actions, there's plenty of that in Donald Trump's history. A decent article summing a lot of it up: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2...mp-corrupt From paying off lawmakers like Pam Bondi to his ties to the New York Mafia to his probably illegal scam of a charitable foundation, Donald Trump is incredibly, openly corrupt. And there's another thing that article missed, because it just broke: Apparently yet another way Trump broke the law was to do business in Cuba while the blockade was still in full force, back in the late '90s: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch...5347779553 Like everything else -- the foundation, etc -- this probably won't lead to charges because people seem to be afraid to charge him with anything during this election cycle though blatantly illegal activity has been uncovered time and again, but it's another criminal act of his to add to the pile. I hope he actually sees court sometime for some of them.

So yeah, while I agree that Hillary is not good at avoiding the appearance of corruption, and has not always fully considered how things she does will be viewed through the insane microscope everything she does is viewed through, I just do not believe that there's any real corruption behind it. There'd be some proof somewhere, instead of just endless fake scandals that amount to nothing.

Now again, you ask me to point to any ONE example of concrete corruption on Hillary's part, and I would say to you "show me ONE example of a police officer shooting a black person due to racism". That's a question that misses the entire point, because the racism is revealed as systemic, and can't exactly be shown in singular examples. Better yet, "show me ONE high temperature day that's absolutely caused by global warming".

I'm sure there are plenty of clear examples of officer-involved shootings done for racist reasons, though... and at this point, isn't pretty much every new record temperature almost certainly the result of global warming? I don't think these things are quite equal with Hillary's history of fake scandals that eventually turn out to have been either nothing (which is it most of the time), or at worst nothing more than misjudgements (Whitewater, private email server) that only are a big deal because the right despises her and makes mountains out of molehills. I think you under-estimate how much of HIllary's so-called corruption is the result of decades of right-wing media attacks, and not actually things she did.


Apart from that, though, the big news of this week of course was the first Presidential debate, and it was kind of interesting...

Biggest (silly) takeaway: Donald Trump didn't look orange. What happened, did he skip the spray tan before Monday's debate?

More seriously though, Hillary won the debate by a mile of course, in my opinion, in polling, in the press, and everywhere else except for blindly pro-Trump places. That's great, and she deserved the win because Trump looked lost, like he had no idea what he was talking about most of the time. It's much less of a joke than you'd wish it would be that I thought that one of the only things Trump sounded like he had a clue about was tax evasion... But on other issues, from nuclear weapons (Trump continues to be stunningly clueless on nuclear issues!) to global warming to the economy and beyond, he was hopelessly lost, while Hillary made one well-supported policy position after another. So yeah, it went pretty well for Hillary.

However, one big thing concerned me: that many people were saying Trump was winning in the first half hour, before fading later on as his attentions scattered and Hillary's attacks mounted up. Trump, winning in the first half hour? Really? Sure, he was more aggressive there, but he was scary aggressive! He came across as a mean, insulting, and constantly interrupting bully, a horrible person you'd want nothing to do with. That anyone would consider that attitude good is both sad and kind of scary.

[Weltall]

I'm voting for her now because there seems to be a real possibility that the Republican Party as it currently exists will not survive a loss this year and making that loss as devastating as possible is a kind of duty now.

All this going on and we haven't even heard anything about the fact that Trump probably raped a 13 year old girl repeatedly around the same time he was claiming losses so as to avoid ever paying federal taxes again.

[A Black Falcon]

It would be amazing if even this degree of republican meltdown actually puts Kentucky in play, but regardless the gesture is appreciated!

But yeah, this race sure has gotten even weirder. The second debate Sunday was unbelievably horrible on Trump's part, his behavior there was incredibly bad even for him! Saying that Hillary is "the devil", that she "has hate in her heart", that he would put her in jail if he was President as if this is some third-world country where that is common, and that he would appoint an independent prosecutor to go after her if he was elected were the lowest moments. Those are disgusting, utterly horrendous things to say, particularly to someones' face and it's very sad, and scary for the future of our democracy, that his supporters are so happy to hear him say those things. His refusal to understand or fully apologize for his comments in 2005 about how he can to sexually assault women with impunity was the other really big deal at this debate, of course; he tried to apologize, but it wasn't enough, and the attacks on Bill Clinton don't work because Hillary is not Bill! Does he actually understand that Hillary is not Bill? I am often unsure... :p

Beyond that, on the issues Trump lied constantly as usual. I was on the debate team for two years in high school, so whenever I watch a presidential debate I always notice the huge contrast between how a judged school debate differs from TV debates. In a 'real' debate, after the debate the judge determines who wins based partially on style, yes, but more based on your facts and arguments. But in a presidential debate, style always counts so much more than fact or argument that it's ridiculous! Yes, the content of the debaters' arguments do matter, but style is hugely over-emphasized. I know that in a TV debate you can't have some supposedly objective judge decide the winner, every pundit and viewer is going to decide that for themselves, but the end result is that while these debates are interesting, they tell us more about how the candidates present themselves and interact with eachother than they usually do about actual policy. Now, fact-checkers working for various groups check statements later, and they sometimes get their fact-checking wrong (creating false equivalency between the parties is something some fact checkers like to do, unfortunately; I wish both parties would be equal in how much they tell the truth, but we are not in that situation, Republicans lie far more.), but at least that's better than nothing.

And that's not even starting on how presidential debates are so focused on redirecting the question to your talking point; try that in a highschool or college debate and you'll get nowhere fast... (Lincoln-Douglas debates have one question you debate during each debate, you have to stick to the subject.) I know why they do this, but it's always frustrating.

So yeah, I did not think Pence won the VP debate because he lied CONSTANTLY, way more than Kaine, and I actually consider that when thinking about who won, I would never just go by style and not substance. And Trump may have stayed focused better than the first debate, yes, but thanks to the unbelievably horrendous first section, I can't say he had a better debate this time, not when in the first debate he didn't get quite as nasty while this time he did. The best statement really is that that both times were horrible for different reasons.

All this going on and we haven't even heard anything about the fact that Trump probably raped a 13 year old girl repeatedly around the same time he was claiming losses so as to avoid ever paying federal taxes again.

He's done and said so many horrendous things that by this point it's impossible to focus on all of them as much as should be. This helped him a lot for a long time in this campaign, but over the past month the sheer volume built up too much and he finally started hurting for it, though of course his constant stream of awful comments is hurting him too. But even now, how can all of them get as much focus as they should when there is such an insane volume of stuff to look at?

But yes, the rape allegations are something which I wouldn't be surprised to see become more prominent at some point in the coming weeks, particularly if there is more damaging tape out there relating to them...

[Dark Jaguar]

The determination for who "won" a debate is pretty silly. The pundits and news heads basically decide it entirely based on who they think "looked better". They don't judge the facts, they don't judge the character even, they just judge who seemed to "dominate" the other more, and thus appear more "Presidential". Someone can be completely right on every point, but if they say it in a way that stutters or lacks conviction, they "lost".

It's why I don't bother with debates. Nothing about any of the past three debates has changed my mind on anything.

The recent trouble for Trump has been those horrible remarks he made on a live mic. What gets me is that, while for any other candidate yes, that would ruin their chances, for Trump that was just another day at the office. Why was THIS the thing that "will ruin him" when none of the other terrible racist, sexist, xenophobic, tyrannical remarks didn't? Heck, the one thing that most interested me during that last debate was Trump's promise to get a "special hearing" to toss Hillary in JAIL if he's elected. You know who puts together special hearings to arrest their political enemies after becoming leader of a country? Dictators, that's who. Considering just how much he talks about other world dictators in glowing terms, I don't think that's an unfair interpretation.

But...

But.

And I hate to point this out (remember ABF, this in no way makes Trump out to be better, he's still worse and I'll get to that), Trump is probably right about Bill Clinton's rapey past.

Now, to be clear, Bill isn't Hillary, but Trump IS Trump. So, Donald's best gambit is to say HIS rapey past is fine because someone Hillary KNOWS also has a rapey past. I also don't for one second think he actually cares one bit about those poor people he's parading around to paint Bill in a bad light. HOWEVER, the fact is, if we're at a point in our society where we've decided we can't ignore claims of rape and abuse just because there hasn't been a court conviction, we MUST take the, unfortunately, numerous claims of Bill sexually assaulting people seriously. To do anything otherwise would be hypocritical. I mean anything. No excuse a Bill supporter can come up with is any different than the ones that people supporting the OTHER Bill (Cosby) didn't also try to use. "They don't have absolute proof! They're all just trying to get money or be the center of attention! They're just trying to ruin a good man's name!" We've all decided those excuses aren't valid, so they can't be used here.



The sad truth is, if we take the accusations against Bill Cosby seriously because it's about time we started listening when multiple women come forward making such claims, we MUST take the accusations against Bill Clinton seriously. Does this mean we can't vote for Hillary? It does not. It DOES however mean she should be very wary about putting Bill in charge of anything once she's in the white house. The worst part of all of this is that it's TRUMP of all people to bring it to national attention. He's doing it for all the wrong reasons, but even a broken Trump is right twice a day.

And again, this doesn't make Trump better. As a candidate, he's still not one to be taken seriously. He isn't qualified to run his own business, much less the entire country. He's exposed his own ignorance about how ANYTHING actually works too many times to be trusted with anything. Even if it WAS Hillary that was "doing the raping", and I was here having to pick between two RAPISTS for president, I'd still have to make that choice, and it would be for Hillary. The third party candidates, well, I still don't believe a third party candidate is "throwing your vote away". That's a self fulfilling prophecy, when you get right down to it. That said, neither 3rd party candidate sounds good even if they had a good chance of winning. One's a libertarian, which is a worldview I briefly flirted with before ditching it as completely lacking in compassion or empathy. The other rejects science in favor of Hollywood pop notions of what makes people healthy (and anyone who is against vaccines is too dangerous to be president I think). That leaves Hillary, to whom I will say "GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY!". http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/demo...tting-way/ As flawed a candidate as she is, the last option of staying home on election day just isn't a choice.

[A Black Falcon]

On the Juanita Broadrick rape accusation, in 1999 she stated the claim that Bill had assaulted her back in 1979. However, earlier in the '90s during part of the Paula Jones investigation she had signed a sworn affidavit saying that Bill had never done anything to her, which undercut her later claim that he had indeed raped her. On the other hand I do think that such charges should usually be believed unless proven otherwise, and Bill sure has a long history of cheating on his wife, with several women also claiming sexual assault or rape (Paula Jones being the major other one), so yes, it's very possible that it's true. Her credibility is damaged by the changing story, though. You'd think that with all the years the Republicans have despised Bill, if he was as bad as Trump says there'd be more strong charges out there. That suggests that he mostly cheated consensually, but that doesn't mean that the Broadrick isn't true, I just don't know. It could be either way.

Beyond that though, the fact that the Republican Party has always been deeply involved in pushing the cases of all of Bill's accusers is an issue. I mean, yes, it makes sense that Democrats would defend their president and their opponents take the opportunity to attack him, but by making the cases and charges so political, it makes it more likely that liberals were (and are) going to not give the charges the serious attention they probably deserve because they're so closely tied to the Republican anti-Clinton hate machine. Those four women who appeared with Trump, the three accusing Bill of assault and the one who hates Hillary because of that old court case, all support Trump for president now, and that's the reason they appeared with him. And sure, Trump did not assault them, but you'd think they would pause before supporting another man with serious sexual assault charges against him... Trump has that ongoing rape case he's facing for example, though for some reason the press rarely mentions it. So yeah, the issue as it stands is a complex mess of politics and law. Overall I'd say that sure, I can believe that Bill may have done those things, or something at least, but it's very hard to prove that for an incident from the 1970s, the charges have become a cause celebre of right-wingers who despise the Clintons, and, most importantly, and Bill is not the one running for president now. If he was the issue would be far more important than it is; I would hope that today someone facing charges like those would not win the Democratic nomination! Bill Clinton is the best public speaker I have ever heard speak in person, he's an amazing speaker with a great talent for making each person in the crowd feel like he's speaking to them, but you can't just ignore those charges, or the numerous consensual cheating cases either. Trump tried to tie this all to Hillary by saying that she verbally criticized the people accusing Bill, but that's a very sketchy case that probably doesn't hold up. Hillary is a victim here too, not a perpetrator.

(But as for comparing Bill to Trump in terms of the severity of their charges, Bill has never been caught on tape saying things like Trump did here and has never faced a trial in court for rape, so on those two levels Trump is worse, though Bill obviously has an unpleasant past as well.)

The determination for who "won" a debate is pretty silly. The pundits and news heads basically decide it entirely based on who they think "looked better". They don't judge the facts, they don't judge the character even, they just judge who seemed to "dominate" the other more, and thus appear more "Presidential". Someone can be completely right on every point, but if they say it in a way that stutters or lacks conviction, they "lost".

Both content and delivery are important in a debate. As I said I absolutely agree that presidential debate pundits vastly overemphasize the importance of the delivery and presentation element, but it IS a relevant part of any debate; present your case poorly and you will do worse even with good arguments, though in high school debate good arguments will probably get you farther than they do in Presidential debates. I know having some kind of formal judging system in quite impossible, as people would never agree on the standard that should be used, but pundits REALLY need to take the Republicans' constant lying into consideration when they say who they think won, because it matters. Pence may have had better stage presence, but he did not win, not when he had to resort to constant lies to stay "ahead".

It's why I don't bother with debates. Nothing about any of the past three debates has changed my mind on anything.

I think that they are worth watching even if you aren't planning on changing your mind, or at least the presidential ones are. You learn things about the state of the race and the issues by watching them.

The recent trouble for Trump has been those horrible remarks he made on a live mic. What gets me is that, while for any other candidate yes, that would ruin their chances, for Trump that was just another day at the office. Why was THIS the thing that "will ruin him" when none of the other terrible racist, sexist, xenophobic, tyrannical remarks didn't? Heck, the one thing that most interested me during that last debate was Trump's promise to get a "special hearing" to toss Hillary in JAIL if he's elected. You know who puts together special hearings to arrest their political enemies after becoming leader of a country? Dictators, that's who. Considering just how much he talks about other world dictators in glowing terms, I don't think that's an unfair interpretation.

Yeah, it is weird sometimes when you consider what things make press and which don't. I have sometimes thought that other stories should be bigger than the ones that do get the most attention this campaign for sure, though this tape was sure to be big news since it has Trump saying he likes to assault women. But yeah, that "I will put you in jail" line should be huge too! Probably its impact was reduced by that people on both right and left have been saying that for at least a year ("Hillary for Prison" is hardly a new concept), but still, no presidential candidate has ever said something that horrendous before, and they never should. There have been some articles hitting Trump on this issue, since it's blatantly dictatorial language, so it was not completely ignored, but it should be bigger than it is. (Of course, the whole "Hillary should be in jail" line of thinking is based mostly on sexism, but that's obvious.)

[Dark Jaguar]

That view of political debates is where you and I differ. First of all, the people "analyzing" the debate have NO actual studies to back up any analysis of who "presented" better, because they didn't actually bother with nationwide polls to determine how the actual voters interpreted the debate. What few limited polling exists indicates neither side really "won" in that sense.

More to the point, why are we determining "winning" in terms of who influenced the most voters? The sole determining factor of who "wins" a debate should be who had the most convincing argument, but heck, most "debates" these days don't even take a form that could be remotely considered to be two sides arguing about an issue. What exactly DID Trump and Clinton debate, in specific terms? If nothing else though, moderators should be fact checkers. They should be calling out both candidates when they say things that are factually incorrect, and that didn't really happen either. Clinton said some things that were wrong, and Trump said a LOT more things that were wrong, but you had to wait until after the debate to find that out.

This isn't some impossible challenge. They can and SHOULD have researched what was likely to be discussed beforehand and have people in the background who can research any curve ball statements. If that means there's some pauses in the debate while the "judges" come back with the facts, so be it. Further, let's stick a giant screen behind the candidates. The very few times they would actually point out Trump's inaccurate statements, Trump flatly denied it. Stick a TV up there with video clips of the candidates at the ready, montage style, so when they are caught claiming they never said this or that, they can run the clip right in front of them and HUMILIATE THEM IN REAL TIME. This needs to happen. This needs to become the standard way of doing this stuff.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the Bill Clinton scandal, and it's a fact that not only is Bill not the candidate in question, but Trump has done the same stuff if not worse. However, don't let politics blind you into a double standard. This scandel is, ultimately, no different than any of the other rape allegation scandals and should be treated identically. Forget that the republicans have been trying to slander the Clintons for decades. That's all true, but irrelevant to the specific claims of these women. You can't have a double standard of saying THIS person's rape allegations should be taken seriously but THAT person's rape allegations are probably just machinations of political opponents and shouldn't be taken seriously, not when actual real women are making the claims. Either you support potential rape victims or you don't. There is no middle ground.

[A Black Falcon]

That view of political debates is where you and I differ. First of all, the people "analyzing" the debate have NO actual studies to back up any analysis of who "presented" better, because they didn't actually bother with nationwide polls to determine how the actual voters interpreted the debate. What few limited polling exists indicates neither side really "won" in that sense.

Huh? The scientific polls show Clinton easily winning both debates. Trump does great in easily rigged online not-really-polls, but that says little. And I do think that such polls do get mentioned in the press, though it will take a bit of course as you need to wait for the data. Still, I agree that debate analysis could be a lot better than it is with more of a focus on fact than optics.

More to the point, why are we determining "winning" in terms of who influenced the most voters? The sole determining factor of who "wins" a debate should be who had the most convincing argument, but heck, most "debates" these days don't even take a form that could be remotely considered to be two sides arguing about an issue. What exactly DID Trump and Clinton debate, in specific terms?

This is a very good point. In high school or college you debate a single topic for the debate. In high school debates were ~20 minutes total, going back and forth with set times for each. But in a presidential debate they cover dozens of subjects, constantly switching between them at will whenever a candidate wants to change the subject, which makes fact-checking or judging MUCH harder, yeah. Do you penalize a candidate for not answering the questions if they do make good points on whatever it is they are talking about, to make up a plausible example?

If nothing else though, moderators should be fact checkers. They should be calling out both candidates when they say things that are factually incorrect, and that didn't really happen either. Clinton said some things that were wrong, and Trump said a LOT more things that were wrong, but you had to wait until after the debate to find that out.

With Trump doing that would be difficulty because you'd need to fact-check him like every other sentence, but yes, I agree that moderators should be doing that many times more often than they have in either debate. They do fact-check him on a few of the most important points, but they let everything else go, which isn't good, it lets the truth-challenged get away with far too much.

This isn't some impossible challenge. They can and SHOULD have researched what was likely to be discussed beforehand and have people in the background who can research any curve ball statements. If that means there's some pauses in the debate while the "judges" come back with the facts, so be it. Further, let's stick a giant screen behind the candidates. The very few times they would actually point out Trump's inaccurate statements, Trump flatly denied it. Stick a TV up there with video clips of the candidates at the ready, montage style, so when they are caught claiming they never said this or that, they can run the clip right in front of them and HUMILIATE THEM IN REAL TIME. This needs to happen. This needs to become the standard way of doing this stuff.

This is a great suggestion, I just doubt any press actually want to go to all that hassle... and plus, with how one party now lies far more than the other fact-checking both equally will bias you against the Republicans, and people, on the right particularly, will savagely attack any media outlet doing that... as we have seen this year, as Trump and his cohorts attack the press for "biased" (read: fair and accurate) coverage. So yeah, if they're getting this much pushback as it is, there's really no downside to going all the way and doing as you suggest, isn't there? So get on that, press... Yeah right.

There is one famous example of a fact-check in a past presidential debate, though. You may recall how the right still claims that Candy Crowley was wrong when she fact-checked Romney during a debate in 2012. She wasn't wrong, but it was a very controversial moment, and the moderators this year have tried to avoid causing that kind of controversy, while still calling him on a few of his biggest lies. that's too bad, because we need more moments like Crowley's in that debate last cycle.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the Bill Clinton scandal, and it's a fact that not only is Bill not the candidate in question, but Trump has done the same stuff if not worse. However, don't let politics blind you into a double standard. This scandel is, ultimately, no different than any of the other rape allegation scandals and should be treated identically. Forget that the republicans have been trying to slander the Clintons for decades. That's all true, but irrelevant to the specific claims of these women. You can't have a double standard of saying THIS person's rape allegations should be taken seriously but THAT person's rape allegations are probably just machinations of political opponents and shouldn't be taken seriously, not when actual real women are making the claims. Either you support potential rape victims or you don't. There is no middle ground.

I agree that their original charges should be taken seriously, yes. However, you cannot separate the claims by the three who appeared with Trump from politics, not with how they, well, appeared with Trump! If that happened because of a reaction against Democrats for supporting Bill Clinton, the man who harassed them or worse if what they say is true, then that's sad for sure... but still it has resulted in them tying their claims to right-wing politics. That they have does not mean that what they claim didn't happen, certainly, I believe we should separate what happened in the past from how they are today, but it does make them as they are today look bad. I can see how some would go from there to not believing their claims, though as I said given Bill's extensive cheating history it'd hardly shock me if they were true.

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah, the recent polling has shown a shift in Clinton's favor. A big one, indicating Clinton has an over 90% chance of victory (by a scant few points, but that's where we are). I'm talking about how they connect that to the debates and then say it was X or Y that specifically changed voter's minds with ridiculous speculation about "image" and whether or not Trump's weird sniffing had anything to do with it. There's just not enough to go on to say exactly what changed minds the most, so that speculation is pointless.

You're right, reality has a liberal bias, but I really wish the media would, when they know they've done their due diligence, simply IGNORE claims they are "biased". Those are just going to happen no matter what. Heck, that's basically an extension of what I've been saying about the democrats to begin with. They keep trying to push a little further right and a little further right to dissuade claims that they are evil tyrants who can't cooperate with the republicans, and it didn't do ANYTHING to actually dissuade those people from thinking that, because it doesn't matter WHAT they do, they aren't even paying attention to begin with! "I don't really know what Obama did, but I know it can't be good." That's a sentence I've heard.

And, to be fair, we can fall into the same traps and have to be very wary of doing so at any time. Like with the Bill Clinton stuff, you seem to be on the ball in terms of recognizing the need to properly investigate such claims, but far too many left wingers seem perfectly okay using the most heinous sorts of defense of Bill that they never would extend to Trump (nor should they, since as I said, such excuses have been recognized as the harmful distractions they are). Trump lying is evil, but Clinton lying is "just how politics work". You know, that sort of thing. I'm trying to simultaneously talk about how terrible Trump would be as president and also not excuse a system rife with that sort of behavior just because it's become normal (or really, probably has ALWAYS been normal ever since the time when monarchy reigned back in Europe).

But enough of that. Trump is uniquely unqualified as a candidate, as we've discussed. If Obama invited me to some event, I'd accept. Heck, if George W Bush invited me to an event, I'd accept, and even call him Mr. President. Trump is the ONLY candidate I can think of across my knowledge of American politics where I can say I would NEVER address him as "Mr. President" or show any respect to the office he was ridiculously elected to, and I would probably spit on the invitation and return it just to be sure. Then I'd leave the country before I was arrested... I didn't think this through, but my point is I've never before seen someone this obviously incapable of even knowing what a president actually does. Say what you will about his politics (they were awful! He shut down government oversight on so many industries and shut down the state-run asylums entirely!), but at least with Reagan you knew the guy actually knew how to be a president and how to avoid accidentally starting a nuclear war over his own pride. You can't say the same about Trump. I expect Day 1 of a Trump presidency would be him hearing the phrase "Um, no Mr. President, we can't actually do that, and here's why." over and over again, with Night 1 being a televised "state of the nation" (with a studio audience of his biggest supporters) in which Trump complains about how ineffective the government is because it won't just follow his orders and do what he wants already. At the end of 90 days, he'll have ordered a ship to fire on another country's ship because they jeered at them, and suddenly we're in a war. Also he might at some point choke on some wine, but I'm not sure if that'll be before or after the inevitable impeachment.

[Sacred Jellybean]

I had to miss the 3rd debate. How was it? Any came changers, or is it the same ol' same ol'?

[A Black Falcon]

The third debate saw the most actual policy discussion of the three debates. Trump was actually looking like an actual debater for the better part of the first half... a junior-grade one being asked the easier questions while Hillary gets hit with tougher stuff. That does reflect their respective competence levels, but it makes it easier for Trump to look like he can answer questions. Of course he mostly failed to answer those questions decently, but it could have helped if he was slightly less out of his depth. But while he definitely was hard on Hillary, I should say that for a debate hosted by a Fox News guy, Chris Wallace, it was better than I expected; there wasn't even a question about Benghazi, amazingly enough! There were some about emails, but Hillary did what she could to focus on attacking Trump for not admitting that Russia was behind the hacking and attack him for his comments about Putin, and Wallace did go at him for that. Any emails questions are going to be tough for Hillary, but that went about as well as such a segment could I think.

The big news this debate, though, was that Trump doubled down on one of his many incredibly dangerous lies, his refusal to say that he will accept the results of the election. Wallace directly asked him about this, multiple times, in an attempt to get him to say he will accept the results... and he refused. Specifically, he said that he won't give an an answer to the question now; he'll say whether he accepts the results after the election. And it's easy to see what he means by that, he'll accept it if he wins and not if he loses. I know the press has made this point, but it really is a dangerous thing for democracy if a significant number of people actually start believing that lie! It's very sad that he's goading them on on this with dangerous lies.


But it's not only Trump. Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans (McCain as well has said this, apparently) have said that they think that they might not allow ANY vote on ANY Democratic Supreme Court nominee if they hold the Senate after this election. They have already stonewalled this for an unprecedented length of time, but saying "we are going to abrogate our constitutional duty to provide any advice and consent on judicial nominees if the other party nominates those people" is utterly disgusting, and also an incredibly dangerous sign for our democracy. You need to have TWO functioning parties to have a democracy, not only one! And between Trump and their Congressional obstruction, right now their party is not functioning.

I didn't think this through, but my point is I've never before seen someone this obviously incapable of even knowing what a president actually does. Say what you will about his politics (they were awful! He shut down government oversight on so many industries and shut down the state-run asylums entirely!), but at least with Reagan you knew the guy actually knew how to be a president and how to avoid accidentally starting a nuclear war over his own pride. You can't say the same about Trump. I expect Day 1 of a Trump presidency would be him hearing the phrase "Um, no Mr. President, we can't actually do that, and here's why." over and over again, with Night 1 being a televised "state of the nation" (with a studio audience of his biggest supporters) in which Trump complains about how ineffective the government is because it won't just follow his orders and do what he wants already. At the end of 90 days, he'll have ordered a ship to fire on another country's ship because they jeered at them, and suddenly we're in a war. Also he might at some point choke on some wine, but I'm not sure if that'll be before or after the inevitable impeachment.

On the note of Reagan, Trump criticized Reagan's immigration policies in today's debate. I'm sure that's going to help him with those in the Republican Party who don't like him... :p

Beyond that yeah, we have never seen a candidate this unbelievably ignorant. We saw that again tonight.