Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Paranoid Android]

President Trump has so far withheld federal relief funds, with many arguing that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in the deep-blue state have mishandled the fires and should be forced to rescind liberal policies in exchange for aid.

However, deadly floods have now struck ruby-red Texas — and the Republican response is much different, with Trump and others promising unfettered and prompt federal support in the months and years to come.

This should be impeachable right here. Another Constitutional crisis of withholding Federal money, aid to specifically Blue States in this case.

I remember the scandal of GW Bush pushing a big bill thru for Florida and brother Jeb! in an attempt to get votes and well help his brother Jeb!.

If this pushes a state to withhold tax dollars this becomes a Constitutional crisis. I'm neve the biggest slippery slope argument person, but this would be the case.

[draynay]

If this pushes a state to withhold tax dollars this becomes a Constitutional crisis. I'm neve the biggest slippery slope argument person, but this would be the case.

I wish they would withhold but so far they’ve been gutless.

[fwc577]

Endus believes that it's every voter's obligation to vote for the least evil candidate that can win - even if said candidate is only marginally less evil than their counterpart.

That in itself is illogical, because if every voter did that, it would only reward the group of evil leaders because they can continue pushing increasingly evil candidates and shifting the needle every election as long as they offered up a candidate that is, say, 1% less evil.

Change from within a system cannot occur when it offers only two options: 1) make the system worse 2) make the system worse, but only slightly less than 1).
The end result is entirely identical, just a matter of speed.

Harhar, Republicans and Democrats are the same. Blah Blah Blah.

Takes like this is how we're sliding into fascism.

You're not smart. You don't sound smart. Your post does not read as it came from a smart person. Stop trying to think your smart and go pickup an actual book and read.

[gondrin]

And once again the white knights for Clinton come out to blame Bernie supporters for Clinton running off her own base…

Seriously, the more you try to cling to the fantasy that it’s the fault of the voters for being run off instead of her for running them off, the more you encourage a repeat of that election.

Even if you were to finger wag ever Bernie supporter here and on every wow server in America into submission, you would only have flipped a few thousand voters at best for that massive effort. By comparison, if you finger wagged Clinton into not saying she wasn’t going to give anything to her voters because “I’m winning” that one event change alone could have been worth 100k votes easy.

Do find it funny that one of the big Clinton quotes that best describes that election is her talking about how she was winning. Weird how her paraphrasing Trump over her ego with sanders caused the Trump curse to kill her election like everything else Trump touches.

Monkeys paw indeed.

Clinton didn't run off her base. The GOP actively did a multi-year campaign to literally make her a toxic candidate. You could say it started back in the 90s when she was the First Lady.

The fact the people believed the GOP at the time when they were the same people complaining about Bush and the fact that they lied about Iraq having WMDs.

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I wish they would withhold but so far they’ve been gutless.

The problem is that the, at least with federal tax dollars, they don't go through the states. Businesses withhold the taxes owed by them and employees and remit them directly to the IRS or whatever agency it is supposed to go to(income taxes go to the IRS, Social Security taxes I believe go directly to the Treasury or maybe the IRS, etc.)

For this to happen, the states would have to pass a law that will tell businesses that any taxes owned to the federal government will now go through the State's Revenue Agency and Comptroller.

Which, for all intents and purposes, would only cause headaches for those businesses and employees seeing as the IRS wouldn't go after the states, they would go after the businesses and employees for not paying their taxes.

I am all for a state like California to just do that and then also shield their citizens from the Federal Government in the form of a blanket amnesty but, it is far harder said than done. And as we can see with this administration, they would just go in with armed IRS agents(the very thing that the MAGAverse was complaining about) to those businesses and arresting people for tax evasion regardless of what the states wanted.

[Gestopft]

More accurately, I just want people to own their own responsibility for their choices, rather than claiming their agency was denied because of something a political candidate did in their campaign.

I agree on an individual level, but when we're talking about political strategy and political actors, I don't think it's just as simple as boiling it down to the micro level of the individual voter where the onus is reversed. I think it's fair to criticize Clinton for pushing away potential votes while also blaming individual voters for their choices.

At the more macro level, it seems that it's just sort of the nature of electoral politics that candidates will 'lose' some of their intra-party competitors' votes in general elections- either to another party or to apathy (hell, somewhere from 1/6 to 1/4 of Clinton's 2008 primary voters switched to McCain rather than vote for Obama- it's just that nobody talks about PUMAs anymore because Obama's ability to turn out/win over voters elsewhere in the electorate was far larger than that loss). Political actors need to understand this and make that sort of calculation- and they should be criticized for making poor calculations. It'd be great if voters were always rational actors....but they aren't. Politicians still need to treat votes as something they earn rather than deserve.

[Paranoid Android]

People in here crying about 2016 elections is crazy. Some in here still don't understand of Just Vote, is such a lazy and entitled attitude.

Once more political nerds coming at voters with pragmatism is itself illogical. Voters who swing elections are not going to vote on "well democracy is at stake". In our political bubble on MMO website people believe everyone has the mindset as we. Especially if we want to rehash 2016 were Trump had much more capital of "he will do the right thing or he can't be that bad".

If some want to feel good that many of the Democratic voters or registered voted much in large of who Trump was. You didn't need to motivate this base. Republicans are gone to the wind with full flung fascism. No need to discuss or dissect them.

Relying on voter responsibility is not going to win many elections since definitely 2024 proved this.

[gondrin]

I agree on an individual level, but when we're talking about political strategy and political actors, I don't think it's just as simple as boiling it down to the micro level of the individual voter where the onus is reversed. I think it's fair to criticize Clinton for pushing away potential votes while also blaming individual voters for their choices.

At the more macro level, it seems that it's just sort of the nature of electoral politics that candidates will 'lose' some of their intra-party competitors' votes in general elections- either to another party or to apathy (hell, somewhere from 1/6 to 1/4 of Clinton's 2008 primary voters switched to McCain rather than vote for Obama- it's just that nobody talks about PUMAs anymore because Obama's ability to turn out/win over voters elsewhere in the electorate was far larger than that loss). Political actors need to understand this and make that sort of calculation- and they should be criticized for making poor calculations. It'd be great if voters were always rational actors....but they aren't. Politicians still need to treat votes as something they earn rather than deserve.

I would agree with this if this were, lets say, the 1950s and 60s(maybe even the 90s) where there wasn't anywhere as much coverage(or as easily of accessible of information) of a candidate as there is now. However, voters pretty much have an on demand and unlimited source of actively finding out what their candidate said, what they voted on(if they are currently in office or were in office at one point in time), what their stance on various policies and the like.

This information is actively out there. It may take some work to find from time to time but, lets take Trump for example, it literally is a 24 hours a day news source online about him. And it has been that was since the late 90s with pretty much internet being cheaper and easier to get for a lot of people(barring some very rural areas). Evenb more so today where handheld computers, like smart phones, are pretty much everywhere and anywhere.

So between having pretty much unfettered and unlimited access to everything a candidate does, how they vote or how they say, at the palm of your hand with nearly instant access, there is now no excuse for any voter to not be informed unless they don't care to look. When Bill Clinton ran? Sure. The internet was barely in anyone's homes. When Bush Jr. ran? Sure. While the internet was widely available, it is far harder to find sources of information. From Obama on though, the internet, outside of some very minor changes, has been pretty much the same since the mid 2000s.

Apathy is the death of a democracy. If a voter is uninformed, that is on them now.

As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot get it to drink.

[Muzjhath]

Grats to Uncomitted and Bernie Bros stuck in 2016.
Trump hands another win to Netanyahu during his big visit this week. The U.S. State Department is imposing sanctions on U.N. Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.


During the 2016 campiagn, two of the populist campaigns blasted the HRC for being part of the "deMoCrat EstaBLiSHmeNt". Because they endorsed Hillary.

<monkey paw curls a finger>

You do know this attitude of yours is part of the problem?
You don't get people to support your party when you constantly deride them.
Are some people butthurt over burnie in 16 taking it too far?
Absolutely.

But then you look at shit said by say. Sen Gillibrand of NY and you kinda get why they might not want to vote for the party at large even when it's the best bet for Justices (all levels( that wouldn't instantly kill their movements

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They ran off. That was their choice. They couldn't bear to vote for Clinton and preferred to see Trump win.

Clinton was not mind-controlling people. They made their free choice. It was not forced in any way.

This remains a really weird argument; you insist that people who preferred a Trump Presidency over voting for Clinton somehow had no personal agency or choice in the matter, and that their hands were forced by Clinton and thus they bear no responsibility for their choices in that election cycle.

Sorry, people remain responsible for their own decision-making, no matter how much you try and deflect that away. Your angle on this is no better than Trumpsters today saying "I didn't vote for these things that were definitely gonna happen if I voted for Trump!" Your vote, your responsibiity.

So, im on both sides here. The voters were dumb for not voting.

But I 100% get it.
There's a reason one of the lowest voting participating groups is black men.
Because they personally feel there is no difference between the major parties.

Is that shortsighted? Yes.
Do I understand it? Yes

[Gabriel]

This thread is such a microcosm of why Trump keeps winning elections and getting away with everything he does lmao.

Democrats keep infighting and refusing to vote for the lesser evil because it makes them feel icky, and the Republicans keep voting and supporting their candidate despite him being a convicted felon, rapist, serial liar and a pedophile lol.

You morons deserve Trump. I'm just angry for the rest of the planet.

[Fugus]

Clinton didn't run off her base. The GOP actively did a multi-year campaign to literally make her a toxic candidate. You could say it started back in the 90s when she was the First Lady.

The fact the people believed the GOP at the time when they were the same people complaining about Bush and the fact that they lied about Iraq having WMDs.

While I can understand where Endus is coming from. I just don't agree with it due to the simple fact that even if every single person who actually follows politics, even tangentially, all decided to just hold their nose and vote for her anyways, she still would have very likely lost. Most of her voters aren't steeped in this stuff, so when she wanted to fuck around with them thinking they had no choice, many of them chose to just stay home instead.

BUT, with Clinton not running off her base, that's just false. She very much did run off her base. Are you saying the interview where she flat out smiled when asked if she would give anything to Sander supporters for their vote and just said "No, because I'm winning", you saying that interview didn't ever take place and it was just AI before AI could convincingly pull it off? Because that was the one where I checked out on her ballot slot.

Now, the whole debate on how much blame the voters have compared to Clinton for her actions could honestly be a debate, but to claim she didn't run voters off with her ego is just cope and excuses, even a decade later, that fact hasn't changed.

[Malkiah]

This thread is such a microcosm of why Trump keeps winning elections and getting away with everything he does lmao.

Democrats keep infighting and refusing to vote for the lesser evil because it makes them feel icky, and the Republicans keep voting and supporting their candidate despite him being a convicted felon, rapist, serial liar and a pedophile lol.

You morons deserve Trump. I'm just angry for the rest of the planet.

not to sideline too much, but there's a lot of "do we blame democrats" or "do we blame democratic politicians" and a shockingly little amount of "do we blame the people who vote republican" - because as a reminder, that last demographic constitutes give or take half the voting age population of the US.

perhaps i'm simply too far into the weeds and lacking moral clarity but somehow i feel like the people who actually support this exact behavior and actively enact it and vote for it are more to blame for this behavior than the people didn't meet your purity test for masturbatory performative objection.

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@Muzjhath @Fugus

side bar and i don't want to get too into this but i gotta admit i am really fascinated - you're both posting in a way that seems to me to be very contrary to the absolute temper tantrums you two had at me 6 months ago when i was saying basically the exact same thing you're saying now and actually acting on it.
is this the result of simple evolution of thought? or were you two sandbagging me for entertainment?

[Fugus]

not to sideline too much, but there's a lot of "do we blame democrats" or "do we blame democratic politicians" and a shockingly little amount of "do we blame the people who vote republican" - because as a reminder, that last demographic constitutes give or take half the voting age population of the US.

perhaps i'm simply too far into the weeds and lacking moral clarity but somehow i feel like the people who actually support this exact behavior and actively enact it and vote for it are more to blame for this behavior than the people didn't meet your purity test for masturbatory performative objection.

Yeah, because we know which way they are going to vote. They hate brown people and facts more than they love their own children and would rather be fuck ups than fathers.

The whole Democratic Politicians versus Democratic Voters thing goes on because if the Democratic voters came out, the Democrats would win every single time. So, the debate is whether you blame the millions of voters who refuse to hold their nose and come out and vote even if they don't like the candidate or know how the stuff works or do you blame the Politicians for running off voters with ego and acting like they are entitled to the votes like Clinton or thinking they are all steeped in this stuff and you can win because the voters just know the facts because you put it out there in a way no one will be motivated to hear?

My view is the politician knows who the voters are and what they largely want and they can change at an individual level to portray that. You aren't going to get millions of Americans who don't have any desire to learn this stuff or most other things to hold their nose for what they hate just because the alternative is worse or they don't know how stuff works or believes lies because Republicans tell lies that sound like a movie plot while the Democrats can't even tell the truth convincingly when the facts are on their side.

At this point, the DNC needs John Oliver, John Stewart, Belle of the Ranch/Beau of the Fifth Column as their campaign managers and the candidates actually have to make attempts when/if they get in to keep momentum because every time they get power and try and compromise it away, they lose more voters who become jaded into thinking it doesn't matter because neither side wants to actually fix the stuff and have to decide between status quo and burn it down. Quite literally poisoning the well for future generations with that crap.

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side bar and i don't want to get too into this but i gotta admit i am really fascinated - you're both posting in a way that seems to me to be very contrary to the absolute temper tantrums you two had at me 6 months ago when i was saying basically the exact same thing you're saying now and actually acting on it.
is this the result of simple evolution of thought? or were you two sandbagging me for entertainment?

Don't recall that, I apologize. But I have been repeating this since that election took place. You sure that was me? What were you talking about?

Edit: If it was something about how Trump won because voters stayed home. I have been saying countless times in one way or another who Democrats would rather lose with a Harris than win with a Walz.

But did blame voters who voting based on stuff that was blatant lies that no one, not even those not steeped in this, could realistically believe. Like those who thought he wouldn't be racist give his last term and all the stuff he has said and did publicly. Or them claiming he wasn't a pedo even when he has been perving on his own daughter during national interviews since she was 14. You have a better chance of not knowing about Jared from subway than that stuff.

[Malkiah]

The whole Democratic Politicians versus Democratic Voters thing goes on because if the Democratic voters came out, the Democrats would win every single time.

i just want to check to be sure, but you know that this is only true if you add a second half to that statement which is that republicans don't come out, right?
like, you're aware that the only available data we have (which is sadly limited and not very thorough) shows that the numbers are split almost dead even, yes?
if you're not aware of this fact please look into it, because i think it kind of collapses your entire argument.

[Gabriel]

not to sideline too much, but there's a lot of "do we blame democrats" or "do we blame democratic politicians" and a shockingly little amount of "do we blame the people who vote republican" - because as a reminder, that last demographic constitutes give or take half the voting age population of the US.

perhaps i'm simply too far into the weeds and lacking moral clarity but somehow i feel like the people who actually support this exact behavior and actively enact it and vote for it are more to blame for this behavior than the people didn't meet your purity test for masturbatory performative objection.

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@Muzjhath @Fugus

side bar and i don't want to get too into this but i gotta admit i am really fascinated - you're both posting in a way that seems to me to be very contrary to the absolute temper tantrums you two had at me 6 months ago when i was saying basically the exact same thing you're saying now and actually acting on it.
is this the result of simple evolution of thought? or were you two sandbagging me for entertainment?

It's pretty clear at this point that the cure for racism isn't love and understanding, but to keep violently smacking it down every time it rears its ugly head, and then keep violently repressing it for several generations until a generation is born that didn't grow up into racism.

[Fugus]

i just want to check to be sure, but you know that this is only true if you add a second half to that statement which is that republicans don't come out, right?
like, you're aware that the only available data we have (which is sadly limited and not very thorough) shows that the numbers are split almost dead even, yes?
if you're not aware of this fact please look into it, because i think it kind of collapses your entire argument.

Last I had checked (Been a WHILE) Democrats were the second biggest party with around ~35% of registered voters, Republicans were literally the 3rd biggest party in a 2 party system with around ~25% of registered voters with the biggest group being Independents with the majority of them swinging left on issues on an issue by issue basis overall.

But like I said, I haven't checked those numbers in the past few years, so might have shifted.

[Malkiah]

Don't recall that, I apologize. But I have been repeating this since that election took place. You sure that was me? What were you talking about?

ha! ok that's honestly hilarious.
i don't expect you to remember every exchange you have here, and obviously it's more prominent in my mind because you're one of the reasons i almost entirely stopped posting here, so that is quite humorous to me you don't even remember it.

it's not an issue that warrants rehashing, so don't worry about it.

[Fugus]

ha! ok that's honestly hilarious.
i don't expect you to remember every exchange you have here, and obviously it's more prominent in my mind because you're one of the reasons i almost entirely stopped posting here, so that is quite humorous to me you don't even remember it.

it's not an issue that warrants rehashing, so don't worry about it.

Did add an edit to that post. To mention a few things I mentioned related to similar stuff in the past. You sure it was me?

[TACOshake]

Lol this is comically stupid level of historical revisionism.

Hillary won the primaries because she won over more of the Democratic base. She did such a good job she locked it up by the end of March. She spent years building a relationship with the base.

Sanders spent years being aloof and trashing the base. Again, He launched his campaign by trashing Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Coalition as part of the "establishment". PP and HRC are orgs that are very important to the base. There's a lot of venn overlap between their activists and the base.

Bernie never planned to win more than 30% of the primary. His hair-brain plan both times was to force a Contested Convetion. Where he would give a West Wing style speech to magic beans a convention win.

Then there's the whole cynacism of reviving "the anti-establishment" bs from the 1970s. Reforging it to speficially attack the democratic base "the Dem establishment". It created a whole off-ramp for people to sit-out voting in the face of rising fascism.

[Malkiah]

Did add an edit to that post. To mention a few things I mentioned related to similar stuff in the past. You sure it was me?

yes it was you. you went off on a bender about an analogy of either letting someone shoot my hypothetical child or not and how that was evidence of a moral requirement to vote for democrats.
between that and darkzeratul accusing me of just wanting facts instead of having a debate when i asked him to provide evidence for his claims, which was quite frankly one of the stupidest things a human being has ever said to me, i just about gave up on attempting to have conversations.

page 14 of the johnson-thune congress thread by the way.
conveniently, muzjhath's posts are right around there as well.

[Fugus]

yes it was you. you went off on a bender about an analogy of either letting someone shoot my hypothetical child or not and how that was evidence of a moral requirement to vote for democrats.
between that and darkzeratul accusing me of just wanting facts instead of having a debate when i asked him to provide evidence for his claims, which was quite frankly one of the stupidest things a human being has ever said to me, i just about gave up on attempting to have conversations.

Ah, yeah, I have made that analogy before. I believe it was asking someone to choose between taking a shotgun blast to the foot or putting the barrel in their kids mouth. There was no good option, just different levels of bad.

My logic behind it was 2 fold compared to this.

1) The democratic candidate never actively snubbed her base like Clinton did. Not having any enthusiasm for them is hard enough, but when you had Clinton going on interviews saying how she wasn't going to do anything you were hoping for because "I'm winning" much harder to justify it when they are pulling crap like that.

2) When it came to Trump this time, you didn't have to get into the weeds at all to see his crap. Not only was his stupidity on full display which many people still won't see because they avoid watching anything like it, they still had Trumps whole first term to go on. So it took them not only avoiding the news for 2 terms on him, but also memory holing his ENTIRE first term as well.

-Clinton vs Trump: Trump was an unknown in the realm of politics and while he had his shows giving him fake credibility, his actual record was horrible but the jokes of him wanting to bang his daughter even then was well known. So while educated people flocked to Clinton, authoritarians gravitated to Trump.

Then in the primaries the Republicans were all trying out Trump everyone going further and further to the right. While the Democrats had Sanders pulling to the left with the rest pulling to the right. The Republicans were going to fall in line behind whoever won even if they had to lie on their way out of the ballot box after doing so, there was no real debate on that side. While in the Democrats side you had imagery of them doing everything they could to avoid him getting traction (Real or imagined the impression was there) and while that might have left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths, most would have still fallen in line till they had wall to wall coverage of Clinton smiling and telling the how she wasn't giving them anything because she was winning. And it wasn't even taken out of context, it was pulled from her own interview.


As opposed to Harris vs Trump: You had Trumps entire first term damage to go by, plus you had all the other stuff he had down over the years since, plus all his dementia moments and his own complaints about age and his actual Hitler quotes. As opposed to Harris and while she squandered enthusiasm trying to do a post primary pivot to the right trying court them, she never acted entitled and snubbed her left flank trying to run them off.


So, not entirely the same situation between the two. First one was unliked and well known who snubbed their base against unliked and unknown and famous. The second was was unliked and well known first term failure who also had known close ties to a world famous child trafficker and going more deranged by the day as well as racist history and dog whistles for days against a well known VP from an administration that just spent 4 years cleaning up the other guys mess. Someone claiming they didn't know Trump was a fuckup this time around was about as small as those who didn't know who Epstein was at all or know the subway guy was a pedo as well.

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Off to bed, can read more tomorrow, later and have a good one.