This is exactly why I hate the claim that 'insert absurdly high percentage' of rape accusations are true, and everybody loses their shit whenever a celebrity gets accused. Either prove it, or I don't give a fuck. Wealthy people and celebrities have these things come and go all the time. There's about a dozen of these a year. There is a big difference between your local woman claiming sexual assault and wanting someone arrested rather than someone filing for money against a celebrity as well. They're also asking for $100 million dollars. Hmmm... If something that disgusting actually came out, with real credible evidence behind, then no, I couldn't vote for him. But so far their case isn't anything more than an accusation so I don't really care. Tucker Max had one of these he posted about on the old board. It's actually such a common issue he was going to do the whole video tape consent thing. Also, this:
The US government lead by Obama, following policies endorsed and engineered by Hillary and her ilk, are pushing the US into military confrontation with Russia. Russia still has nuclear weapons. Trump has publicly stated many times that he wants to make peace with Russia. If Donald Trump were a convicted rapist and Hillary were an actual saint, I'd still take him being president over WW3.
As a former Bernie Bro, we did warn you guys about this shit. He was beating Trump in the general election polls by 20 points at the time. But he lost because 'I'm with her' or whatever denialist reason. Hillary might still win, much good may it do us. He had some pretty stupid ideas like the one about free university for all, but I just assumed stuff like that was never going to happen anyway. Bernie was an attack dog that was at least serious about his platform though. Well, we might have voted for some stupid ideas (and some very good ones), but at least we knew what we were voting for, obviously the Hillary supporters didn't.
That is the most smug, self righteous thing I have ever read on here. https://giphy.com/gifs/southparkgifs-3oz8xSSfPn6zRSjJPa
CNN published an article every week with stories about how Bernie was sexist, and even now Hillary supporters are pretending the e-mail scandals and constant selling out are nothing but political smears. If I'm a smug douche so are the people I've been talking with. The supporters should have bumper stickers this election that are more honest. 'Vote asshole' and 'at least she's not Trump' sound about right.
Dude, I don't think you want to criticize Hillary for being Orwellian when you're voting for Trump. I'm too lazy to write a full response, but it's hard to make Orwellian criticisms when your candidate wants to torture folks. But let's just take your last point that people are drinking the Hillary kool-aid because she knows what's best for us. How many times has Trump said "I alone can fix this?" His own supporters online call him the god-emperor. C'mon now. As far as totalitarianism goes, maybe the guy who praises Putin's style isn't the best way to go. Your criticisms ring hollow without fail. You can say Hillary is a panderer and a liar. No doubt. But you can't square those criticisms with a vote for Trump. The discomfort you feel here is cognitive dissonance.
When did I deny that Trump is a jerk? And our country has been torturing people for a long time. That's nothing new, as bad as Trump is for saying it outright. I'm sorry you write off my criticisms as delusions. They're right there in plain sight in the wikileaks, opentruths.org, the senate's voting record, or any other place you would care to look.
Ok this is fucking disgusting: Apparently what he said on the audio wasn't "just words" or whatever. He actually did the disgusting things he was talking about, on more than one occasion. I feel a weird combination of enraged, and dirty. Like I need a shower but also I want to beat someone's face in.
Yeah, that's really disgusting. Back to abstaining. Then we have Hillary who bullied Bill's victims of sexual assault on the other side. Right after a release that proved she's been lying to everyone's face the whole campaign. I've never been so ashamed to be an American. This election is truly fucked. I just can't do the Gravy thing and pretend it's all ok because 'they're a liberal' or 'they're a conservative'.
Kenneth Bone for president. If you ever wondered what an undecided voter actually looked like. A god damned G. Spoiler
I know it's not the main focus of all this, but it's fascinating to me the chaos this has caused in the Republican party. Congressman, senators and governors are withdrawing their support of Trump and there are rumors that Pence might withdraw his candidacy as VP. I've only done a short amount of research, but I don't think a VP candidate has ever withdrawn from the race because they disagree with or can't support the presidential nominee. Trump will most likely attack the republicans that are withdrawing endorsements, because that's just who he is. These comments might literally break the Republican party. Like it or not the hard core Trump supporters make up a decent chunk of the Republican base and this could cause a major rift in their voting base. This may all calm down if he loses, but it's still fascinating. This could have devastating affects on the party for years to come.
Sorry, I've been cluttering up the thread a bit with my opinions, but I think this is the most interesting aspect of the election. The democratic base has been more unified the last decade, but is starting to fracture too. The hardcore Trump supporters are the majority of the republican base now. Some are racist, terrible people, but there's more that support him because when he got on stage and slammed the establishment for taking corporate hand outs and moving jobs overseas with terrible trade deals they knew he was telling the truth. The republican establishment tried to portray him as a jerk, but they hate politicians so he played up being a jerk and they loved him even more for it. Basically, they wanted the Donald to fire these guys. Most of the Bernie or bust supporters fell into line, but are absolutely disgusted with their candidate. I'm not characterizing all Hillary supporters as sheep, but there really are people so stupid they want her to win 'because she's a woman' or because it's so easy for Hillary to make them rationalize her lies, or whip them into a frenzy. One of the more interesting articles I've read this election was from Nate Silver who was explaining that the reason he had struggled so much to predict this election during the primaries was because this country is ever more tribal than he imagined. I have no idea what any of this means in the long run. Right now it looks like we'll end up with Hillary, the most establishment vanilla candidate in the election. So how much of it actually matters and how much of it is just volatility built on this one election? If she's a good president, and just a terrible panderer and shameless liar (kind of like Bill) then maybe it won't mean much at all. But imagine what will happen if during her presidency one of the 'too big to fail' banks(and yes, they currently are too big to fail) blows up the stock market again and takes the economy into a nose dive. This country is going to go fucking ballistic.
I don't think the Democratic party is as fractured as you think. From what I've read and seen from the polls the majority of Sanders supporters are liberal leaning independents and many of them are left of the Democratic party. This means that while they don't identify as Democrat it is very unlikely that they would vote for a Republican candidate given their current platform. I am one of those liberals. I agree that most Sanders supporters, liberals and myself do not view Hillary as a great candidate, but she's not as polarizing as Trump. I think a Clinton presidency will be a continuation of the Obama administration, which I view to be a good thing. I would like a candidate that would push the country to the left a bit more, but given the makeup of congress right now it's probably not possible for that type of candidate to have too much success.
This is why the RNC eventually got behind Donald. Popular anger at the establishment being followed by said establishment replacing the voter picked candidate would have been a bigger disaster than just gritting it out and taking the negatives this election cycle. I think voters attention spans will be mighty short in regards to Trump's personality this election cycle. The real lasting affects will be how or if the Republican party will change their platform to accomidate the nonsensical nonconservative ideas Trump has championed.
I'm not so sure. I can't see them coming out and supporting his conspiracy theories like Obama is a Muslim, or that Mexico is sending its people. I can't see them supporting the proliferation of nuclear weapons either, even though the Obama administration did it with Israel. The problem for the republicans is Trump was successful being so politically incorrect, and perhaps even dog whistling on occasion, while at the same time the party is fighting against an ever shrinking white majority. The republicans already had a unit full of nonsensical nonconservative ideas, and that was basically what the tea party was about. If this election has shown us anything, I think it's that nobody can predict shit. The republicans will have to deal with a fractured base that has a large wing of socially conservative, but fiscally (and on things like health care) liberal, and another wing of the free market or crater types. Edit: Maybe, but the protectionism stuff and the ideas on trade are very popular and traditionally liberal. Same with the things he's said about the tax code loop holes for the wealthy. Very liberal, and very popular ideas. Then the rest of his simplified tax code is fairly conservative...
I don't agree on some respects. I really don't think there is a big chunk of right leaning folks who are actually fiscally liberal. I think the people supporting Trump who are latching onto his more liberal principals are just the right's electorate being tired of being promised x,y,z action (repeal Obamacare being the bigger promise as an example), that have gone unfulfilled.