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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 9, 2016 18:02:16 GMT -5
Ha ha ha ha ha
California.
Well, fianancially speaking they would probably do OK on their own, but since idealogically the state's ethos is liberal extremism run amok, pretty much anything that even resembles a weapon of any kind is illegal so they wouldn't do too well in a Civil War 2 vs the rest of the US. A bunch of unarmed hippies vs Donald Trump commanding the most sophisticated military in the world would not end well.
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Post by pichubro on Nov 9, 2016 22:56:35 GMT -5
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 9, 2016 23:03:49 GMT -5
....why...why would he do that....And why was he filming it? So many questions...
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 10, 2016 19:17:12 GMT -5
It's time once again for crazy ass tin foil hat conspiracy theory time!
So ever since the very beginning of this thing, all the way back to when Trump first started his campaign, there has been this conspiracy theory floating around that Trump was a sleeper cell planted by the Clintons to trash the republican party and help her win the presidency.
Most people overlooked this idea, because...Well, it would be insane, and seems extremely unlikely, given Trump's persona.
But looking at him today....and really since he won the election, he seems...deflated. Like, the Trump persona, the Mr. McMahon character he plays on TV is gone. He's been...civil. I'd go even as far as to say...Docile.
He was this way with his victory speech. At first, I thought it was because it was 3AM local time and he was tired, and finally out of crack. But every appearence I've seen since he's seemed the exact same way. Quiet, no bluster, no boisterousness, just....Dejection.
You'd think the guy from a week ago would be on top of Trump tower with a megaphone yelling about how bigly he won and great America was gonna be without spicks.
But this is not the case. He met with the Obama and told him it was "an honor to meet with him" and that he was a "great man".
You know, Donald Trump? The guy who just a few years ago was the unofficial spokesman for the BIRTHER MOVEMENT?!
And look at the markets. It was looking pretty rough on election night, with futures trading dropping like 800 points overnight or something, but now they are rallying?
Like, the idea of this conspiracy theory is still fucking bonkers crazy, but like, what if he was actually not expecting to win?
I mean, how hilarious would it be if the Clintons intentionally coluded with Trump and had him portray the ultimate unelectable candidate on TV, having him run an objectively terrible and inefficient campagin, and having him be so vile, so vulgar, so over the top and ridiculous, that she would look not just electable, but amazing by comparison, and there would be no possible way he could win..... AND HE STILL WON!!!!
I mean, the chances of this are hilariously low, but good god how funny would that be!? Engineering the biggest false flag operation in US history, and it totally backfires on her, because she underestimates just how unelectable she is.
Putting the insanity of this scenario aside, never the less, Trump is super deflated, and the markets are rallying. I feel like regardless of the reason, Trump didn't expect to win, and is now coming to grips with the fact that this is real. I feel like the signal has been sent to the markets to tell them Trump is gonna play ball with them, and he's just gonna be a puppet for them for the next 4 years, and now the markets are perking back up. It fits into the modern Republican governing strategy of having a dumb figurehead as president, and running the show from behind the scenes, usually through the VP. It's been their MO since Regan. The Democrats on the other hand prefer to build a cult of personality around their presidential candidate and have a dumb VP.
I feel like now Trump is going to basically do nothing he promised on the campaign trail (which is a good thing) but will now just be an empty suit for the Republican establishment to enact their crazy ass adjenda and just repeal all of the progress made in the last 8 years and plunge us back into the dark ages and another massive recession with the already existing trend of growing income inequality being put onto the fast track. (which is a terrible thing).
Ironic, don't you think?
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Post by pichubro on Nov 10, 2016 20:52:46 GMT -5
Pence is human garbage though so this is a bad thing all around.
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 11, 2016 12:45:15 GMT -5
Precisely. Did you think Pence was a Trump choice? No, the Establishment picked that. Trump would have picked some equally crazy person like a yes man from one of his companies or some outside crazy person like Ben Carson
I think we just need to start looking at what very little silver lining there is to this entire thing, like the fact that Hillary Clinton won't soil the position of first female US president for the remainder of history. When we finally do get a female president, it'll hopefully be someone who deserves that role. But I guess thats the only real silver lining.
Hopefully, the Democrats will see reason and blackball the Clintons forever, like the Republicans did for the Bushs, and the progressive wing of the party finally stop being cowards, put their Che Gueverra T-shirts on, blast some Rage Against the Machine, step up and fight for their party and this country and kick all that neolib bullshit to the curb. If we're lucky, this loss will give the progessive movement a shot in the arm and make them coalesce into a united front and something actually useful rather than the sparse spattering we have now.
Instead, they will probably just fracture the same way the Republican party has and they will do nothing useful for years, until the wealthy neolibs suppress their rebellion, or the progressives take down the bourgeoisie.
And in the meantime, the Republicans will trash this country pretty much unopposed.
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Post by tim on Nov 11, 2016 13:20:14 GMT -5
this is ultimately a vindication of bernie sanders and the progressive wing of the democratic party. i predict in 2020 trump declines to seek a second term and pence loses to a sanders-style progressive democrat.
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Post by tim on Nov 11, 2016 13:21:39 GMT -5
if clinton won it would have been the ultimate vindication of clinton-style democratic corporatism and nothing would have ever changed.
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Post by tim on Nov 11, 2016 13:23:26 GMT -5
sanders feels like a major figure coming out of this, and he clearly intends to be. while clinton was running he felt diminished and defeated, now the roles are totally reversed. clinton is done, this was a truly embarrassing defeat. sanders is a big name in politics now, has HUGE positive approval ratings and the conventional wisdom is if only they nominated him he would have defeated trump. he's even making a clear power play by calling for keith ellison to replace schultz (clinton's stooge) as DNC chair.
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Post by pichubro on Nov 11, 2016 13:37:08 GMT -5
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 11, 2016 15:31:53 GMT -5
this is ultimately a vindication of bernie sanders and the progressive wing of the democratic party. i predict in 2020 trump declines to seek a second term and pence loses to a sanders-style progressive democrat. I agree with this... if clinton won it would have been the ultimate vindication of clinton-style democratic corporatism and nothing would have ever changed. ...But I don't agree with this. For the most part, I don't think this was a rejection of idealogy so much as it was a rejection of the candidate. If people wanted to reject the corporate democratic paradigm, Obama wouldn't have got a second term. It was more that they were rejecting Hillary herself. She's never really been a popular candidate, at least in terms of enthusiasm. No hillary supporter in 2008 came even close to being as enthusiastic as an Obama supporter, or as a Bernie supporter in 2016. She has never had a strong platform or message, she always tries to just get by on name recognition alone. And she's always had that slimey reputation, since 08. There has never been enthusiasm around a Hillary Clinton presidency, her campagin slogan has always effectively been "hold your nose and 'do the right thing.'" And if that wasn't enough of a political boner killer, the whole Montreal Screwjob-esque handling of the Primary where she blatently cheated the guy people actually liked in front of the world to take her throne, reinforcing EVERYTHING that everyone was thinking about her from the beginning? Yeah, that probably didn't help either. And as if THAT wasn't enough, she did a shit job running the actual campaign as well, just like she did in the primary, just like she did in 2008. Hillary did nothing to make herself stand out, to even PRETEND that she had any big ideas that were gonna help anybody. All she did was give Trump all the mindshare. She ran ads that were just him saying the shit that energizes his base the most, and otherwise said nothing about what she was going to do if she won. She basically just emphisized the fact that, despite how absolutely disgusting his platform was, THAT HE AT LEAST HAD ONE! If it wasn't for the fact that Trump ran probably an even shittier campaign than she did, it probably would have stood out how terrible her campaign was. So I really don't think this was a rejection of anything but Clinton. If she had found a way to screw Obama the way she screwed Bernie in 2008, McCain would have won. This all being said, I think this is precisely why I think progress could have still happened under Hillary. If she would have won, and democrats got the senate and house, I think the progressive elements of the party would have been able to keep her straight. And even if not, theres another factor here which isn't being considered. If you see this as a rejection of the Clinton Style Corporate Democratic platform, it must also be seen nessessarily as an embrace of the extremist right wing Fascism-Lite platform the Republicans are pushing. Yeah, it's gonna energise the progressives and POSSIBLY cause a realignment of the democratic party, MAYBE. But at what cost? It's a hell of a gamble. We are now 100% sure that the next 2 years are going to be absolutely terrible, and probably the next 4. We will be back to 2008, as if Obama didn't exist, in the blink of an eye. After all, these are republicans we're talking about, they aren't gonna play with kid gloves the way Obama did for the first year of his presidency. They aren't gonna just take a supermajority for granted. They're going to go right back to business as usual during the Bush years, except even more emboldened than before, because now they think they don't need to be polite infront of the colored people anymore. Is this worth it for MAYBE realigning the Democrats? You think the Corporate Democrats are just gonna disappear after Trump is inagurated? A New York Elitist just won! Thats their people! They're gonna bend over their desks for him, even if not publically. The idea that the progressives weren't gonna have to fight both parties under Trump is a fantasy. You saw what they did to Bernie, the corporate democrats don't give a fuck about the progressives, they never did. At least under Clinton, the progressive might have been able to try and hold her to her campaign promises. So yeah, Clinton would have sucked, but it probably would have been a slow burn over the way this is gonna go down under Trump. Clinton at least had the Progressives who would have at least TRIED to keep her honest. Theres no one to do that for Trump, and Trump is a figurehead now anyway. Guess who's in charge of picking Trump's cabinet now? Mike Pence. And suprise suprise, his short list has a whole lot of establishment guys on it. The guy who claimed he was gonna beat the man just became the man. The people trying to vote against the Establishment, just gave the Establishment unilateral control and a blank check. The cost of realigning this way far outweighs the potential benefits, given the probabilities involved. Yeah, it MIGHT work, but given how much will be sacrificed just for an opportunity that MIGHT work? Clinton's weakness that would have made her useful is exactly what made her a terrible candidate, her malleablity. She at least tries to keep up the appearence of not being a racist corporate elitist like Trump, which could have been used to force her to make good decisions. Trump is immune to morality arguments, and is firmly in the hands of the establishment now, so theres no forcing him to do anything to help anyone but himself and his ultra rich elitist buddies. This is where the plan fails. At the end of the day, progress always wins, we're going to get our progress one way or another, it's just a question of how long it takes, and how many roadblocks are put in the way. Ironically, the idea behind your thought process is supposed to be a long game strategy, but it puts a far bigger roadblock in the path of progress, and will probably end up making the long game even longer. Clinton would have probably been 4 years of gridlock, but at least the road would have been open. The Trump regime is closing the road altogether for 4 years, and driving backwards. The next Democratic president is gonna just spend the majority of their time fixing shit the Republicans broke again under Trump rather than actually executing their own adjenda. It's hard to be progressive if you're just retracing your own steps. |
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 11, 2016 15:42:24 GMT -5
sanders feels like a major figure coming out of this, and he clearly intends to be. while clinton was running he felt diminished and defeated, now the roles are totally reversed. clinton is done, this was a truly embarrassing defeat. sanders is a big name in politics now, has HUGE positive approval ratings and the conventional wisdom is if only they nominated him he would have defeated trump. he's even making a clear power play by calling for keith ellison to replace schultz (clinton's stooge) as DNC chair. I remember thinking a few weeks ago about this. At first, I thought Clinton and the DNC had Bernie by the balls and were just forcing him to fall in line, but then I realized that he was actually playing possem the whole time. He would have destroyed himself if he had made too big of a stink about the whole DNC screwing him thing during the campaign, when they had everyone convinced that Hillary was a shoe-in and Trump had no chance. And being as smart as he is, he knew that, and instead slipped under the radar. Now he can proudly stand up, and give the Democratic party the biggest middle finger in the world and say "I told you so." I'm just hoping he takes off the kid gloves and capitalizes on this as hard as he possibly can. |
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 16, 2016 13:31:26 GMT -5
www.politico.com/story/2016/11/senate-democrats-settle-on-leadership-team-sanders-elevated-231481So this is one thing the protest voters probably didn't think about Instead of pushing the party left, the party leadership is going to try to move further right to try and get the blue collar vote that they think they lost. Yeah, they brought Bernie in, but only because they want to pascify the progressive wing. They don't give a fuck, they never did. they're just using this as an excuse to push further right. Good job rejecting those Clinton Style Corporate Democrats, you sure showed them. Is it actually gonna take until the hungry peasents storm The Bastille again before these people get it?
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 17, 2016 1:45:13 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/politics/democrats-house-senate.html?_r=0Ohhh, those Corporate Democrats clearly look to just be bleeding out after that fatal blow dealt by all those protest votes. Clearly their idealogy has been completely rebuked and......now they're going further right...Completely bending over their desks for their fellow New York Elitist overlord... Any minute now that progressive wave should hit.....any minute now...
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Post by tim on Nov 18, 2016 16:27:06 GMT -5
getting close to trump is exactly what they need to do during his presidency. trump is highly susceptible to influence from people he perceives as being on his side, and he's already distrustful of establishment republican figures. democrats have a unique opportunity during a trump presidency to act as a counterweight to his republican advisers, because trump isn't a real republican.
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Post by Mario the black knight on Nov 18, 2016 17:21:36 GMT -5
Even though the establishment republicans have already stacked his cabinet thus far with the right wing-iest of right wing republican whack jobs.
Even if a key democrat does somehow get his ear and give him the idea to pass something that isn't counter productive, his cabinet will immediately be like "Don't listen to them. Now go back to deregulating the banks like we told you to. We'll go get those mexicans another day, we promise."
It doesn't matter how close the democrats try to get, the establishment republicans will always be closer. His cabinet makes Bush's cabinet look like a bunch of california hippies.
You have to also consider that the Corporate Democrats share interests with Trump. They're rich dirtbags just like him, so anything Trump does which looks out for Trump, will also look out for them. Under the guise of "getting the blue collar vote they lost" they're gonna push further right, because it behooves them to do so. They're probably still diluted enough to actually think Hillary was a good candidate and only lost because the minorities and independants didn't come to heel like they did for Obama.
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