https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.5b6b7813d69b So Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing and is currently in charge of the justice department which basically means he is in charge of investigating himself. This fuck stick needs to go.
Appointing someone who hates the environment to lead the EPA and someone who hates telecom regulations to chair the FCC was straightforward, but finding someone opposed to the abstract notion of justice and the rule of law to be Attorney General was a much harder task... but damn it if Trump didn't nail it again.
Good lord. A senator talked with a forergn diplomat?!??!?!!!!!! The dems are seeing boogymen in every innocuous event. If they had any parity in outrage for even a whiff of impropriety they'd be burning Hillary down for the Clinton Foundation right? I won't mind seeing a special prosecutor just to put it to bed, it really seems like the left is really using this to bog down the administration's agenda more than anything else. It seems like a stalling tactic.
Its becoming so silly. They have no power so they are lashing out in any way they can and I dont get it. It would be very easy to counter Trump with cogent points about policy. Instead, its full-steam ahead with identity politics and nonsense. You'd think they'd learn their lesson? I would love for a reasonably sane Democrat to beat Trump in 2020, but I just dont see it happening. Chris Murphy's response to his joint session speech is a perfect illustration why: "You can just tell that Trump hates Muslims and we need gun control." Great, thanks bud. The people of Connecticut are lucky to have you, I guess.
The problem is, even though they gave a little ground on the "we might be able to work with him on common ground issues." I think the left is scared as shit to actually work with him since they fear his toxicity with their base. They are painting themselves in a corner by perpetually defining him as evil and corruption incarnate. I have a feeling we'll be in for four years of Democrat obstruction with their rationalization that it's simply Trump. I can't fault them that much as turn around is fair play but it will be funny to watch the endless news clips of them play off their obstruction contrasted with their own howls from the past 8 years.
True, and turnabout is fair play, even though its not a constructive one. But the Democrats have already lost their base, thats why Trump won in the first place. They arrogantly ignored them and they went to the other guy who didnt. The far left isnt going to vote for Trump. Hell they almost didnt vote for Hillary. Since no one is really buying identity politics anymore, they need to rethink their approach. If thats not a crazy sign of corruption, I dont know what is. French law prevents the distribution of violent images. Pure censorship.
This is not unique to the left, unfortunately. At least 50% of politicians in Washington, right and left, absolutely, unequivocally have reelection as their top priority at the expense of all else. Until the people understand that their representatives are there to represent themselves first and the people if it's convenient or not in conflict with that first part, nothing will change that.
Honestly I don't buy they "lost their base" simply on identiy politics. It might have turned off key segments in a few key states. Their is some definite burnout with identiy politics but not enough to have them drop it as their platform. It is risky and they could lose the same key segments again if they aren't careful but it's hard to fault them when demonizing Trump in every regard plays so well with the vast majority of their constituants. They are banking on the energy of the women's march and this town hall stuff enough to tell me they are more concerned with going further left to appeal to the larger portion of their base.
I dont think so either, I should have phrased it better. Its two separate points. I dont think many people really care about identity politics one way or another other than an annoyance. I think they lost the base because they failed to recognize the economic disenfranchisement of unskilled workers.
It's been quite apparent that establishment democrats still don't fully understand that they don't represent the people they claim to have in their corner. With the Keith Ellison/Tom Perez vote, the dems released their own opposition research against one of their own to maintain the Obama/Clinton status quo. The antisemitism campaign against Ellison wasn't right, even if he did have past ties to the Nation of Islam(and there is a lot of conflicting accounts of his membership). I believe that people can reform from prior shitty beliefs. But, he was the candidate for DNC chair that Bernie was behind and better represented the people they needed. The fact that the establishment could have thrown Bernie supporters a bone, even in a relatively meaningless position, but didn't, tells me that lessons haven't been learned.
The quote from the transcripts is: "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians." If it isn't such a big deal, then why did he lie about it, under oath?
I mean you either accept his spokesmans explination that the question as posed was interpreted as focusing solely on his role as part of the trump campaign or you don't. Everyone on my Facebook bitching are looking, akin to bill maher in their hopes, every morsel that comes out is the smoking gun for wildly impeachable illegal behavior. The MSM treats everything as such as well. At most it could be said to be a lie of omission. Good luck proving it was done with maliciously intent. Unless his office was bugged you'd never be able to prove anything they discussed wasn't totally above board. So it comes down to the lefts and MSM insinuations of nefarious dealings.
Bill Clinton went through impeachment hearings and trials cause he lied under oath about getting a blowjob. That was the perjury he committed. At least this is somewhat dishonest and actually effects how the country is governed.
I keep seeing this weird criticism of Democrats saying that they lost for doing things that the Republicans won with (identity politics, obstruction, etc). It doesn't make any sense. Republicans have embraced identity politics for years. Any time you hear phrases like "America is a Christian nation," "Real America," "Coastal elites," etc, that is explicit identity politics (without even getting into the insane amount of dog whistling aimed at a white identity). Republicans will vote their identity just as consistently as anyone else; it's just that the Republican party has done a better job of tying various voters' identities to the Republican party. Hell, they even managed to create identities: You are not an American who happens to own a gun, you're a gun owner, and damn it you better vote like one.
Clinton still tried to deflect with the lawyer esque argument of the meaning of what "is,is." His argument was really the same as Sessions, he perceived the the question in a different fashion than the prosecutor thus he believed he was right, but there was a cum stained dress that directly contradicted his lie regardless of perceived severity. Again you'll have a hard time proving intent without some super concrete evidence.
I disagree. Among voters who said the economy was the biggest issue, Clinton won by a solid 11 points. Among voters who said Foreign Policy was the biggest issue, she won by 27 points. The voters Trump did incredibly well with? Voters who said immigration or terrorism was the biggest issue (31 and 17 point lead respectively). That's not economics, that's identity. It was a pure "fear of the other" that won Trump this election.
It can be, but if Trump voters were considering it an economic issue you'd see people who listed the economy as the #1 issue and people who listed immigration as the #1 issue move together. They didn't, they moved almost in opposite directions. And listening to Trump's rhetoric throughout the campaign it's easy to understand why. His rhetoric was built around casting immigrants as dangerous criminals, and our border security as lax and ripe to be exploited at any moment. His rhetoric continues that theme, with the VOICE office in DHS. It was very much about stoking fear of a low-crime population by lying about the risk to physical safety they represent.
Those statistics really look like they're cherry picked off a site trying to push a narrative. For one thing, most people are not single issue voters. Does saying people who listed the economy as their #1 issue voted Clinton really mean anything when it's a top priority for both sides? Most of these policy questions are not partisan in the sense that one side cares about it, and the other doesn't. When you talk about the big policy issues, it's more a question of direction than priority. I'm sure too that many people who voted Clinton vehemently disagreed with Trump's stance on immigration, regardless of whether they listed a different issue as their #1. http://www.people-press.org/2016/07/07/4-top-voting-issues-in-2016-election/ Most of those splits aren't actually that big until you get down to identity politics (which was far more important to democrat voters) and the environment. The real split between republican and democrats on minority issues seems to be that republicans consider these issues mostly resolved, and the democrats think we have a lot more to do. I'm not trying suggest that a Trump voter's stance on immigration can't be racial, but if you're concerned about crime (cartel violence and drug trafficking along the border isn't some made up concern) and driving down wages for working class Americans that isn't necessarily racially motivated.