US Politics

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**d-usa**

Sitting in the airport, wondering if I should just look for an apartment here instead of boarding my flight home!

**Sarouan**

jasper76 wrote:
So what did I just see? Clinton won, right?

She was much more at ease during the whole debate, that"s what I saw.

Trumpeteers said otherwise, of course, but since they can only spam "TRUMP IS DESTROYING HER" or "CLINTON = LIAR/RAPIST", it's a given they live in a world where facts don't exist.

**Spinner**

jasper76 wrote:
So what did I just see? Clinton won, right?

Clinton unfurled her proboscis and drank his spinal fluids.

It was like watching an unprepared child with a book report. Everyone knows you only read the Spark Notes on Lord of the Flies, you can stop saying the words 'conch shell' over and over.

**sirlynchmob**

d-usa wrote:
Sitting in the airport, wondering if I should just look for an apartment here instead of boarding my flight home!

That's a tough choice, I'd stay in Germany, especially this close to octoberfest

**jasper76**

Didn't seem like he put away with the "grab her coochy" comment. He just denied it was a problem

It's hard to see how you come back with women as a groper.

**Henry**

I'm not sure either could 'win' this. Maybe one or the other could lose it, but the format didn't suit either of them.
Trump needs freedom to ad lib without constraints and definitely without being forced to stay within time limits and on subject.

Clinton is well known for being strong on policy, but she doesn't have the fluidity of Obama to get it across which is why she kept encouraging people to her website. That's not much use in this personal format. Though she did manage to engage directly with some of the audience questions - most notable for me being the muslim and energy questions.

**BigWaaagh**

Gordon Shumway wrote:
BigWaaagh wrote:
It was nearly 50 minutes before I realized that I was watching 'Frankenstein meets the Wolf-Man' on TCM and not the POTUS debates.

Wait, that was on TV and I watched this? I feel duped. Get your counter programming advertising on, TCM!

They're showing the entire Universal 'Frankenstein' run of movies. I'm loving it! I don't have any more minutes of my life to waste on listening to the gak that spews out of that orange skinned fethface's pie hole.

Pence should just push the ejection button NOW! Kasich should step over to the Libertarian Party and tell Gary to go sit at the kiddie table and make a POTUS run.

**BobtheInquisitor**

She mostly sat back, spoke like a presidential candidate when needed, and let Trump do most of the damage to Trump. She did leave out a few baited traps, but I only recall one that he decided to trip with his face.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, some of Trump's background antics are going to make SNL and late night TV very happy.

**curran12**

This is not terribly relevant, but I love this tweet:

https://twitter.com/Brian_Tallerico/status/785303713481158656

**jasper76**

Seriously, one shouldn't dismiss his answer to the video question. He refuses to concede that he was condoning sexual assault, and that hits the nerve of a big movement for women's rights. He probably just lost the election. That will be played over and over again. The source video and the response.

His threat to jail his opponent is pretty third world too.

**sirlynchmob**

jasper76 wrote:
Seriously, one shouldn't dismiss his answer to the video question. He refuses to concede that he was condoning sexual assault, and that hits the nerve of a big movement for women's rights. He probably just lost the election. That will be played over and over again. The source video and the response.

His threat to jail his opponent is pretty third world too.

yep, many on the right do seem to aspire to be a 3rd world country.

**AndrewC**

It just illustrated with his response about his VP candidate that Trump thinks that this is about him rather than accept that it is about the country.

**Gordon Shumway**

What 59 year old man who isn't a coach is using "locker room talk" in the first place? This is a man who is stuck in the mindset of a 10th grader.

**sebster**

Trump keeps talking about extreme vetting, but he's never actually explained what that means. I'm left to conclude it would like the current vetting processes, but the customs officials and applicants would all be given bottles of mountain dew and rollerblades.

Gordon Shumway wrote:
Scary conspiracy thought: the GOP leaked the video to the WP to sink Trump, thereby forcing him out of the race,

The guy Trump made his comments to was Billy Bush. He's the cousin of Jeb Bush and GW Bush, and nephew of GHW Bush. So there's an interesting link there to some heavyweights of the GOP, which suggests maybe this was a GOP leak. However, if that were true why did they hold this while Jeb Bush was getting slaughtered by Trump in the primaries? And Billy Bush will basically lose his career over this, he's already been suspended for the things he was recorded saying and doing.

And the timing of this plays too perfectly with Clinton's attack at the end of the first debate about attacks on women? It was an interesting call from Clinton to choose attacks on women as the one to focus on, ahead of attacks on Mexicans or the other groups he's said offensive things on. Maybe that's because women are a much bigger proportion of the total vote, or maybe it was because they wanted Trump's problems with women firmly established in the voters minds, before they dropped the recording and confirmed Trump was exactly as horrible a person as everyone had believed.

allowing Pence to swoop in and save the party.

I saw a classic line on this; "Republicans look to replace candidate who hates women with candidate who hates woman and gay people".

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
What's blowing my mind is that all of a sudden, this is a bridge too far for Republicans - everything he said before was OK or at least palatable, but now, whoa, that's too much? These guys drank their way through 90% of a quart of spoiled milk, and suddenly now they don't like the taste?

Yep. The Republicans appear to be a political party where their leader can villify people based on race or ethnicity, talk about penis size in a nationally broadcast debate, fleece people out of money with a faux-university scam... and they don't draw the line. They didn't draw the line when he showed incredible ignorance about US policy, or when he threatened radical and highly destabilizing ideas like walking away from NATO. But now, finally that there appears to be a line drawn over bragging about groping women, it really begs the question why the line wasn't drawn a long, long time ago.

**sirlynchmob**

sebster wrote:

I saw a classic line on this; "Republicans look to replace candidate who hates women with candidate who hates woman and gay people".

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
What's blowing my mind is that all of a sudden, this is a bridge too far for Republicans - everything he said before was OK or at least palatable, but now, whoa, that's too much? These guys drank their way through 90% of a quart of spoiled milk, and suddenly now they don't like the taste?

Yep. The Republicans appear to be a political party where their leader can villify people based on race or ethnicity, talk about penis size in a nationally broadcast debate, fleece people out of money with a faux-university scam... and they don't draw the line. They didn't draw the line when he showed incredible ignorance about US policy, or when he threatened radical and highly destabilizing ideas like walking away from NATO. But now, finally that there appears to be a line drawn over bragging about groping women, it really begs the question why the line wasn't drawn a long, long time ago.

the party who's so afraid of trans people groping their wives and daughters in bathrooms, are now defending a man who admits to groping wives & daughters. I think that was finally to much cognitive dissonance for some of them to handle, while to many others are still trying to defend him.

**Gordon Shumway**

@Sebster: my conspiracy theory was half in jest said before I read up about how the video was unearthed and released. The Clinton leaking it angle didn't make sense to me from the get go: why release it with an outside shot of still letting someone else take over? It would have been better timed two weeks out--unless, of course this is just the first taste....dun dun dunnnnn.....

The actual story is more interesting. NBC (entertainment division, which held the tape) held back on it out of fear of a lawsuit from Trump while still working on the story. Then NBC's news division got wind of it and began working on the story. In the meantime, someone was getting sick of the delays, so they leaked it to the WP who got the scoop. Which is why MSNBC had a full story ready to go seven minutes after it broke on the WP and the entertainment show was able to air theirs without fear of repercussion later that night.

**sebster**

d-usa wrote:
There are a handful of states where your vote matters when it comes to electing the next POTUS, for the vast majority of us our votes don't make an impact. So whembly voting for Johnson honestly isn't any more or less #NeverTrump than any other alternaive. But he's not voting #ForTrump (at least that we know off).

And it's worth noting that voters understand this. Voting for third parties is way lower in swing states than in safer seats - people are happier to protest vote when their vote isn't going to decide the election anyway.

**Gordon Shumway**

sebster wrote:
d-usa wrote:
There are a handful of states where your vote matters when it comes to electing the next POTUS, for the vast majority of us our votes don't make an impact. So whembly voting for Johnson honestly isn't any more or less #NeverTrump than any other alternaive. But he's not voting #ForTrump (at least that we know off).

And it's worth noting that voters understand this. Voting for third parties is way lower in swing states than in safer seats - people are happier to protest vote when their vote isn't going to decide the election anyway.

I would like to see the quiz results of voters in swing states vs. non swing states about their knowledge of the policiticans' positions. Does advertising (perhaps as a side effect) actually inform? Do voters in those states take their roles more seriously?

**sebster**

Relapse wrote:
The Trump and Clinton names are both linked with the abuse of women. This country has really sunk into the dregs to make these two the top pick for president.

The Clinton name is also associated with some of the great funk music of the 1970s. I'm not sure that has a great deal of relevance on who Americans should elect as president in 2016.

Anyway, here we have the same story as we've seen throughout the 2016 campaign - an effort to equate an actual thing Trump said or did, with an accusation against Clinton or someone related to Clinton. These are not the same fething things.

**AduroT**

Donald Trump is a true Gentleman.

**sebster**

whembly wrote:
The issue is that when these women made public these accusations, Hillary & Clintonites did everything they could to destroy these women...

...and thus sheltered an actual serial sexual assaulter.

You noted there were accusations, and then in your next post you have just assumed all those accusations are true.

And as I've asked before, please give me the quotes of Hillary Clinton doing anything to 'destroy' these women. What did she actually say. Because I've gone looking and I've found lots of articles in which conservatives bag Clinton for what she did to the women accusing Bill Clinton, but I've never actually seen one of them actually state an actual thing that she did.

**jasper76**

Should we tolerate a candidate whose policy is to jail his political rival?

(Because that just happened...)

**Gordon Shumway**

jasper76 wrote:
Should we tolerate a candidate whose policy is to jail his political rival?

(Because that just happened...)

The correct answer here is no, despite what a lot of campaign rally t-shirts say.

**jasper76**

We are doomed. The fact checkers are unraveling whether Trump did or did not tell his followers to checkout a sex tape.

**Gordon Shumway**

jasper76 wrote:
We are doomed. The fact checkers are unraveling whether Trump did or did not tell his followers to checkout a sex tape.

I don't know why Cooper didn't just read the tweet. It was only like 26 characters or something.

**AduroT**

Trump REALLY can't stay on topic at all, and he's totally obsessed with isis.

Anderson Cooper: Thank you, Mr. Trump. The question from Patrice was about are you both modeling positive and appropriate behavior for today’s youth? We received a lot of questions online, Mr. Trump, about the tape that was released on Friday, as you can imagine. You called what you said locker room banter. You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
Donald Trump: No, I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was – this was locker room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk. You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have – and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world. And they look and they see. Can you imagine the people that are, frankly, doing so well against us with ISIS? And they look at our country and they see what’s going on. Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.
Anderson Cooper: So, Mr. Trump…
Donald Trump: And we should get on to much more important things and much bigger things.
Anderson Cooper: Just for the record, though, are you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?
Donald Trump: I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
Anderson Cooper: So, for the record, you’re saying you never did that?
Donald Trump: I’ve said things that, frankly, you hear these things I said. And I was embarrassed by it. But I have tremendous respect for women.
Anderson Cooper: Have you ever done those things?
Donald Trump: And women have respect for me. And I will tell you: No, I have not. And I will tell you that I’m going to make our country safe. We’re going to have borders in our country, which we don’t have now. People are pouring into our country, and they’re coming in from the Middle East and other places.We’re going to make America safe again. We’re going to make America great again, but we’re going to make America safe again. And we’re going to make America wealthy again, because if you don’t do that, it just – it sounds harsh to say, but we have to build up the wealth of our nation.
Anderson Cooper: : Thank you, Mr. Trump.

**jasper76**

(sorry, wrong page)

**sebster**

Gordon Shumway wrote:
@Sebster: my conspiracy theory was half in jest said before I read up about how the video was unearthed and released. The Clinton leaking it angle didn't make sense to me from the get go: why release it with an outside shot of still letting someone else take over? It would have been better timed two weeks out--unless, of course this is just the first taste....dun dun dunnnnn.....

The actual story is more interesting. NBC (entertainment division, which held the tape) held back on it out of fear of a lawsuit from Trump while still working on the story. Then NBC's news division got wind of it and began working on the story. In the meantime, someone was getting sick of the delays, so they leaked it to the WP who got the scoop. Which is why MSNBC had a full story ready to go seven minutes after it broke on the WP and the entertainment show was able to air theirs without fear of repercussion later that night.

Ah, I had no idea about any of that, and was just speculating wildly. Thanks for that information. Really interesting.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gordon Shumway wrote:
I would like to see the quiz results of voters in swing states vs. non swing states about their knowledge of the policiticans' positions. Does advertising (perhaps as a side effect) actually inform? Do voters in those states take their roles more seriously?

That would be pretty interesting. Do voters in swing states take their responsibility more seriously, and work to get themselves more informed? It'd hard to pick that kind of effect apart from the efforts of political parties to advertise and mobilise voters in the state more, but even just seeing an overall effect would be pretty interesting.

**tneva82**

AduroT wrote:
Trump REALLY can't stay on topic at all, and he's totally obsessed with isis.

Easy way to score points.

And speaking of isis wonder if they will still have part to play in this. They want Trump as president as much he himself wants to be so if they can they will try something. And to maximize effect it has to be close to the votes. Maybe short before last tv-arqument to give Trump chance to trump up the angle.

Presumably USA security organizations also realize it's about the time they are expected to try if they can so have increased securities though.

**sebster**

jasper76 wrote:
Should we tolerate a candidate whose policy is to jail his political rival?

I have to admit that bit kind of just washed over me. I heard it happen, but at the time it just sounded like yet more incredibly terrible Trump nonsense, and fairly similar to stuff he's been claiming in campaign speeches. In hindsight, though, t was pretty incredible, and a historic new low.