Dave, America knew whaat Trump is. And enough voters made it possible for him to win the E.C. -- only 77,000 over 3 states put him over the top. What Trump is was in plain sight, yet our fellow Americans put power over American values.
No natinal politician I ever knew mocked a POW or a Gold Star family or bragged about sexually assaulting women or said Nazis are nice people.
There is nothing in Trump's character that reflects the goodness of the American people. Trump represents everything that is evil and disgraceful in any given population. At least we now know what percentage of the American population tends toward fascism.
Many of tRump's supporters are, I assumne, intelligent people. Which simply points to the fact that intelligence is not an indicator of one having gained any wisdom. Wisdom surpasses intelligence in all things IMO.
tRump's supporters, like their cult leader, are severly lacking in wisdom.
Lets hope Democrats can win majority next week, but the polls don't show that.
What we have to admit is half the American voters support racist, bigoted politicians and have for decades. So it's not unreal to say that's half the kind of people we are.
Take the Steven King race in Iowa. As of today King has a one point lead. The closest race he has ever had and he has had a Congressional seat for years, usually winning by a lot. King has been a white supremacist, bigot for ever and it has never been a secret. So Iowans purposefully have been electing a hate filled bigot for years.
Trump made it perfectly clear what kind of hate filled, woman hating bigot he was during the primaries. He was the leader of the Birther movement for years, which was proven nothing but a lie. Yet he won enough votes to win the presidency.
You can argue the Electoral College, the Russian interference, vote suppression, but almost half the voters voted for Trump the bigot, hater. That's who they wanted for their president. It was no secret that he was a hate filled bigot when they voted for him.
For those who say this country is a majority Democratic country, the facts and votes are not on your side. The Republicans have not only had majority in Washington D.C., but in most States, which is how they got the gerrymander edge.
As a liberal, it would seem to me that these haters should be losing by a lot, but it's very close about 50/50.
I live in a bigoted, hate filled country. That's just a fact, and it's represented by their votes.
So are all the people not voting the Democrats some claim our country really is?
Are these Republican voters not really haters, they just want the policies (bigoted policies) Republicans represent and are willing to live with the racism and bigotry that comes along with Republican politics?
For those who say this country is a majority Democratic country, the facts and votes are not on your side.
Yes they are. Gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the structure of the Senate mean that the majority in Washington does not represent the majority in the country.
Republicans dominate a larger number of states, but those states have a minority of the population.
Only once since 1992 has a Republican won the popular vote for President (2004), and that was in incumbent in wartime who won it by a small margin.
The country does lean Democratic, and this trend is escalating over time as the older, more racist and fundamentalist demographic dies off and increasing numbers of young people abandon religion and its associated bigotries.
Cynicism and defeatism have only one practical effect -- they help the Republicans. In practice it does not matter whether this effect is intentional or not.
Here's some information on how the Goopers cheat to win:
"With Election Day approaching, an odd little story from Dodge City, Kansas, made headlines in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week. Local elections officials in the Wild West outpost of yore, now a meatpacking center that’s majority-Latino, had moved their lone voting place outside the city limits, more than a mile from the nearest bus stop, as anti-immigration crusader Kris Kobach—the state elections chief—was fighting off a strong Democratic challenge in his quest for the governorship.
The whole controversy seemed so obviously outlandish—the kind of over-the-top effort to deter voters of color that could only happen in the Deep South or Kobach’s Kansas—that it’s no wonder the story was catnip for national reporters. While another secretary of state overseeing his own election for governor, Kobach’s Georgia ally Brian Kemp, had been garnering scrutiny for months with his massive “purges” of registered black voters, and while reports on the perils of voter ID laws have become numbingly familiar, the Dodge City tale offered a colorful twist on the theme of race-based voter suppression. The Times editors couldn’t resist a cheeky headline for this saga: “To Cast Their Ballots, These Voters Will Have to Get Out of Dodge.”
But the only unusual thing about this story was that it made news at all. Over the past decade, Republican elections officials have been shuttering polling places in minority neighborhoods, low-income districts, and on college campuses at a feverish pace. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the U.S. had more than 132,000 polling places; by the time Donald Trump ascended to the White House, eight years later, more than 15,000 of them had been closed nationwide. After 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court basically lifted federal Voting Rights Act oversight from states that were particularly notorious for racial discrimination in elections—including Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas—the pace of poll closures went into hyperdrive. Thanks to Shelby County v. Holder, if you ran elections in a majority-black county in Georgia, or a booming Latino neighborhood in Houston, you no longer had to ask the Department of Justice to approve a change in where people could vote, or to prove the intent wasn’t discriminatory. […]"
Democrats have been losing elections for a long time. This is why the Republicans have the majority to set voting districts and voting laws in States. They get to put their people in power and on the judicial benches. I'm well aware of Republican dirty politics. The oldest truism about America is we have dirty politics. The fact is Democrats have misread the strategy needed to win elections. They never considered a candidate could win the presidency without winning the popular vote? Why not? The math was there to see. After the Civil war during Reconstruction blacks won election to the Congress. Blacks voted as a group for Republicans because of Lincoln. It was the Democrats that shut that down. It was Democrats that started the KKK. It was Democrats that created the Jim Crow laws. In the twentieth century it was the Democrats that held political power in the States and at the federal level and they set the voting districts and voting rules, which included biased reading laws for blacks before they could vote and a host of other dirty rules that depressed the black vote for decades. It was the Democrat Wilson that fired blacks from holding a federal government job, then banned them from being hired by the federal government at all. It all changed when FDR and his social policies took over. That was the best hand up the blacks ever had by the government. Blacks have been voting Democratic as a group ever since. Joe Kennedy used to send out a crew of workers to pay people cash if they voted for his son. LBJ stuffed the ballot boxes in Texas to insure a win. This garbage has been going on since Jefferson claimed Adams was keeping a whore. Adams was just paying for a room for a destitute woman. Both parties have been playing by the same rules since the beginning of the country. Both parties have been playing dirty with the rules since the beginning of the country. Both parties are well aware of the unfair bias the majority has and both parties have preyed on that edge. If this is a majority Democratic country, then they haven't been voting in numbers large enough to hold onto majority. It does no good to claim cheat. Better we figure out how to start winning. It's a fantasy to say our thinking and policies should rule when we are in the minority, that is a false fantasy and denies reality. That is defeatism and cynicism. Why do all these liberal bloggers write negativity constantly? Because that's where the facts lead them to think about what's going on. Politics are cyclical. History proves that. Maybe Trump is the start of a change to a more liberal voting populace, I hope so, but for now Republicans have majority. Bitching about dirty politics that have been going on for 200 years gets us nowhere. Where is the winning ideas and platform that will create the voting edge that Democrats need to get majority back?
You've made a lot of god points. On a lot of these issues, we have indeed been arguing back and forth, heck, we had a war, about a lot of them. Americans are fond of saying that today, we've never been as divided as a country since the Civil War. But I think we have.
Most of us commenting here are old enough to remember the Vietnam War protests of the 60's. People died in those actual protests. They were insane. To date we've not seen anything rivaling those protests. No riots, etc.
Your last question, "Where is the winning ideas and platform that will create the voting edge that Democrats need to get majority back?" is where it's at for me.
This election, it's enough to vote against the GOP and Trump. But if the Dems hope to win the White House and swing the cycle their way, they've got to have a coherent message that people can vote for... as opposed to just voting against the other guy.
Currently, the Dems do not have, nor did they have one, in 2016.
People vote for stuff/people based on programs, reasons and their message. Like you, I'm waiting to hear what it's gonna be.
10 comments:
If half of what Howard Fineman is reporting, and he grew up as part of that synagogue, this is a terrible situation.
Our President is 100% incapable of acting as the Consoler in Chief of the US. Or... he just doesn't care to do so.
Which is it?
Either way, it gives evidence of his unwillingness to even try and unify the USA.
Dave, America knew whaat Trump is. And enough voters made it possible for him to win the E.C. -- only 77,000 over 3 states put him over the top. What Trump is was in plain sight, yet our fellow Americans put power over American values.
No natinal politician I ever knew mocked a POW or a Gold Star family or bragged about sexually assaulting women or said Nazis are nice people.
There is nothing in Trump's character that reflects the goodness of the American people. Trump represents everything that is evil and disgraceful in any given population. At least we now know what percentage of the American population tends toward fascism.
Many of tRump's supporters are, I assumne, intelligent people. Which simply points to the fact that intelligence is not an indicator of one having gained any wisdom. Wisdom surpasses intelligence in all things IMO.
tRump's supporters, like their cult leader, are severly lacking in wisdom.
"It doesn't get any lower than this"
Careful, Trump would take that as a challenge.
Lets hope Democrats can win majority next week, but the polls don't show that.
What we have to admit is half the American voters support racist, bigoted politicians and have for decades. So it's not unreal to say that's half the kind of people we are.
Take the Steven King race in Iowa. As of today King has a one point lead. The closest race he has ever had and he has had a Congressional seat for years, usually winning by a lot. King has been a white supremacist, bigot for ever and it has never been a secret. So Iowans purposefully have been electing a hate filled bigot for years.
Trump made it perfectly clear what kind of hate filled, woman hating bigot he was during the primaries. He was the leader of the Birther movement for years, which was proven nothing but a lie. Yet he won enough votes to win the presidency.
You can argue the Electoral College, the Russian interference, vote suppression, but almost half the voters voted for Trump the bigot, hater. That's who they wanted for their president. It was no secret that he was a hate filled bigot when they voted for him.
For those who say this country is a majority Democratic country, the facts and votes are not on your side. The Republicans have not only had majority in Washington D.C., but in most States, which is how they got the gerrymander edge.
As a liberal, it would seem to me that these haters should be losing by a lot, but it's very close about 50/50.
I live in a bigoted, hate filled country. That's just a fact, and it's represented by their votes.
So are all the people not voting the Democrats some claim our country really is?
Are these Republican voters not really haters, they just want the policies (bigoted policies) Republicans represent and are willing to live with the racism and bigotry that comes along with Republican politics?
For those who say this country is a majority Democratic country, the facts and votes are not on your side.
Yes they are. Gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the structure of the Senate mean that the majority in Washington does not represent the majority in the country.
Republicans dominate a larger number of states, but those states have a minority of the population.
Only once since 1992 has a Republican won the popular vote for President (2004), and that was in incumbent in wartime who won it by a small margin.
The country does lean Democratic, and this trend is escalating over time as the older, more racist and fundamentalist demographic dies off and increasing numbers of young people abandon religion and its associated bigotries.
Cynicism and defeatism have only one practical effect -- they help the Republicans. In practice it does not matter whether this effect is intentional or not.
Accepting the facts is not cynicism and defeatism. Not facing the facts is a fantasy that helps nothing.
Here's some information on how the Goopers cheat to win:
"With Election Day approaching, an odd little story from Dodge City, Kansas, made headlines in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week. Local elections officials in the Wild West outpost of yore, now a meatpacking center that’s majority-Latino, had moved their lone voting place outside the city limits, more than a mile from the nearest bus stop, as anti-immigration crusader Kris Kobach—the state elections chief—was fighting off a strong Democratic challenge in his quest for the governorship.
The whole controversy seemed so obviously outlandish—the kind of over-the-top effort to deter voters of color that could only happen in the Deep South or Kobach’s Kansas—that it’s no wonder the story was catnip for national reporters. While another secretary of state overseeing his own election for governor, Kobach’s Georgia ally Brian Kemp, had been garnering scrutiny for months with his massive “purges” of registered black voters, and while reports on the perils of voter ID laws have become numbingly familiar, the Dodge City tale offered a colorful twist on the theme of race-based voter suppression. The Times editors couldn’t resist a cheeky headline for this saga: “To Cast Their Ballots, These Voters Will Have to Get Out of Dodge.”
But the only unusual thing about this story was that it made news at all. Over the past decade, Republican elections officials have been shuttering polling places in minority neighborhoods, low-income districts, and on college campuses at a feverish pace. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the U.S. had more than 132,000 polling places; by the time Donald Trump ascended to the White House, eight years later, more than 15,000 of them had been closed nationwide. After 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court basically lifted federal Voting Rights Act oversight from states that were particularly notorious for racial discrimination in elections—including Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas—the pace of poll closures went into hyperdrive. Thanks to Shelby County v. Holder, if you ran elections in a majority-black county in Georgia, or a booming Latino neighborhood in Houston, you no longer had to ask the Department of Justice to approve a change in where people could vote, or to prove the intent wasn’t discriminatory. […]"
Democrats have been losing elections for a long time. This is why the Republicans have the majority to set voting districts and voting laws in States. They get to put their people in power and on the judicial benches. I'm well aware of Republican dirty politics.
The oldest truism about America is we have dirty politics. The fact is Democrats have misread the strategy needed to win elections. They never considered a candidate could win the presidency without winning the popular vote? Why not? The math was there to see.
After the Civil war during Reconstruction blacks won election to the Congress. Blacks voted as a group for Republicans because of Lincoln. It was the Democrats that shut that down. It was Democrats that started the KKK. It was Democrats that created the Jim Crow laws.
In the twentieth century it was the Democrats that held political power in the States and at the federal level and they set the voting districts and voting rules, which included biased reading laws for blacks before they could vote and a host of other dirty rules that depressed the black vote for decades.
It was the Democrat Wilson that fired blacks from holding a federal government job, then banned them from being hired by the federal government at all.
It all changed when FDR and his social policies took over. That was the best hand up the blacks ever had by the government. Blacks have been voting Democratic as a group ever since.
Joe Kennedy used to send out a crew of workers to pay people cash if they voted for his son. LBJ stuffed the ballot boxes in Texas to insure a win.
This garbage has been going on since Jefferson claimed Adams was keeping a whore. Adams was just paying for a room for a destitute woman.
Both parties have been playing by the same rules since the beginning of the country. Both parties have been playing dirty with the rules since the beginning of the country. Both parties are well aware of the unfair bias the majority has and both parties have preyed on that edge.
If this is a majority Democratic country, then they haven't been voting in numbers large enough to hold onto majority.
It does no good to claim cheat. Better we figure out how to start winning. It's a fantasy to say our thinking and policies should rule when we are in the minority, that is a false fantasy and denies reality. That is defeatism and cynicism.
Why do all these liberal bloggers write negativity constantly? Because that's where the facts lead them to think about what's going on.
Politics are cyclical. History proves that. Maybe Trump is the start of a change to a more liberal voting populace, I hope so, but for now Republicans have majority. Bitching about dirty politics that have been going on for 200 years gets us nowhere.
Where is the winning ideas and platform that will create the voting edge that Democrats need to get majority back?
Jerry...
You've made a lot of god points. On a lot of these issues, we have indeed been arguing back and forth, heck, we had a war, about a lot of them. Americans are fond of saying that today, we've never been as divided as a country since the Civil War. But I think we have.
Most of us commenting here are old enough to remember the Vietnam War protests of the 60's. People died in those actual protests. They were insane. To date we've not seen anything rivaling those protests. No riots, etc.
Your last question, "Where is the winning ideas and platform that will create the voting edge that Democrats need to get majority back?" is where it's at for me.
This election, it's enough to vote against the GOP and Trump. But if the Dems hope to win the White House and swing the cycle their way, they've got to have a coherent message that people can vote for... as opposed to just voting against the other guy.
Currently, the Dems do not have, nor did they have one, in 2016.
People vote for stuff/people based on programs, reasons and their message. Like you, I'm waiting to hear what it's gonna be.
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