National Elections Thread

[Id82]

So Trump got a convention bump and is now leading in the polls http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-trump-gets-convention-bounce-drawing-polls-to-dead-heat/.

I'm getting sick and tired of how stupid the American people are. I have no idea how in this day and age a fucking fear mongering narcissitic blow hard can make it this far. Especially from a man who makes extreme promises with no actual plans on how to deliver on them. It's truly getting scary now.

[RavynousHunter]

Is it really that surprising?  This is a country that STILL daemonizes intelligence, that despises intellectual pursuits and holds up brainless athletes as the epitome of what one can become.  A country where people like Tom Cruise can still be taken somewhat seriously despite being a raving lunatic, where "militias" aren't disbanded by force despite being domestic terrorists in waiting, where the only thing that matters when you want to run for leadership of the incredibly complex machine that is government is whether or not you're popular and say things people like.  This is a country that barely blinks at mass murders, but if you dare disrespect or somehow interrupt the Super Bowl, you'd be lucky to not get lynched.  A country that spends more on military R&D than it does on fucking infrastructure.  The only two things that separate us from third world shitholes in Africa are a high GDP and an ostensibly working government.

[Dakota Bob]

That's why it is imperative to invest in edumacation.

[Eiki-mun]

Demagoguery is nothing new and there's no reason to believe it would suddenly stop working now. Trump isn't special, he's just the latest in a long line of people who know just what to say.

[Id82]

No it's not surprising unfortunately, but it makes me angry.

[Ironchew]

So Trump got a convention bump and is now leading in the polls http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-trump-gets-convention-bounce-drawing-polls-to-dead-heat/.

I'm getting sick and tired of how stupid the American people are. I have no idea how in this day and age a fucking fear mongering narcissitic blow hard can make it this far. Especially from a man who makes extreme promises with no actual plans on how to deliver on them. It's truly getting scary now.

It doesn't help when neoliberals deny that the poor and middle class have any legitimate grievances with our corporate overlords. It enables an opposing demagogue who, dangerous as his rhetoric may be, at least acknowledges that they have something to be angry about.

[Id82]

Hillary has to somehow unite the democratic party this week or we can be saying heil president Trump.

At least with Hillary I can kind of expect another four years of pretty much the same policies as under Obama. But with Trump I have no idea what that fucker is going to do. He's unpredictable and that's what makes him so scary.

[Ironchew]

Hillary has to somehow unite the democratic party this week

I don't see that happening.

At least not as long as Clinton's campaign strategy is saying "Fuck you" to the left and riding high on wads of corporate donor money.

[dpareja]

Hillary has to somehow unite the democratic party this week

I don't see that happening.

At least not as long as Clinton's campaign strategy is saying "Fuck you" to the left and riding high on wads of corporate donor money.

Jill before Hill, Johnson before... (there's got to be some sort of crude pun here, help me Art!)

[Skybison]

I do see it happening because within a day Trump will once again say something of world destroying horribleness and the left will remember that whatever misgivings they have about Hillary aren't worth the risk. 

These post convention bumps don't mean much and return to normal quickly.  However the fact that the normal rules of polling apply to Trump at all, as opposed to all but a small collection of racist morons refusing to vote for him is still terrifying.  If Trump can do this well, image what a competent racist could do.

[dpareja]

Half a day in and already the DNC has had more good speeches than the RNC had in total.

[Askold]

I just realized that the next elections in USA are gonna get even crazier than this. I mean think about it, you have seen Trump's campaign but imagine what his re-election tour is going to be like? He is going to have to one-up the previous campaign and distract from the disasters of his first four years in office. I expect him to murder an illegal immigrant on live-tv as an publicity stunt.

[SCarpelan]

Half a day in and already the DNC has had more good speeches than the RNC had in total.

But what about radical Islamic terrorism and illegal alien drug smugglers who run around killing Americans and stealing their jobs? The Democrats clearly don't really care about American lives at all.

[dpareja]

Predictions:

The Republican Party as we've known it is over. It'll stick around, but anyone who expects to win in its nominating contests is going to have to be openly racist, not covertly racist.

The Democratic Party as we've known it is also over, because there are two possibilities: Clinton wins in November, or Clinton loses in November. In the first case, she faces stiff opposition from more progressive members of Congress, one of whom challenges her in the 2020 primaries. Every Democratic presidential contest after that will be largely a repeat of this year's in terms of the policy differences between the candidates, at least until one camp wins a landslide victory over the other. In the second case, the accusations from Clinton's supporters that she lost because Sanders supporters didn't vote for her, and the accusations from Sanders supporters that Clinton lost because she's not a "real progressive" make it untenable for the two camps to remain in the same party.

[Askold]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/26/republican-national-committee-republican/rnc-right-no-democratic-speaker-mentioned-isis-con/

...Because if they don't scream incoherently about the dangerous Muslims every day then someone might forget about them right? And actually talking about politics is obviously heresy.