Trump number 8

[Paul Calf]

more details on this here

https://www.google.com/amp/s/lawandcrime.com/crime/the-younger-the-better-evidence-unsealed-in-case-of-pro-trump-lawmaker-who-searched-craigslist-for-a-boy/amp/

sorry for amp link but far too many popups otherwise

apparently he was '420 friendly' too !!

15 years on the nonce wing  for something that'd earn you a bit of opprobrium in pretty much any civilised country in the world. Meanwhile, mass murder is fine as long as you don't actually hold the gun yourself.

America, fuck yeah!

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Jesus Christ a tantrum baby was elected president by trying to incite a race war. Scraping the depths of petty tabloid bullshit isn't necessary, and only serves people who want to be next in line. This stuff absolutely sets the table for "better" replacements who can be as monstrous as they like as long as they have good PR. "I'll vote for the guy who didn't have sex with porn stars LOL oh they hate that I'm allowed to get treatment for lung cancer and have sent all the black people to jail, whoopsy".

You're right there's no need for it but it's fucking funny though so let's give it a pass.

[ajsmith2]

Yeah, sorry it was a cheap shot and 2015 style lolTrump humour that isn't helping. But I couldn't resist. The fact the Guardian saw fit to include those details struck me as amusingly absurd. 'Scandalous' tittle tattle like this affects Trump not one whit or course, look how much traction Peegate got. There's no way this will stick, but by the same token I don't think this kind of stuff has the kind of impact anymore to contribute to dangerously underplaying Trump's evil. We're well past that now.

On a similar note, Trump was gloatingly tweeting the other day about Obama getting the number of US states wrong in 2008 (presumably he'd just been made aware of this) and saying 'can you imagine if I'd made that mistake?' Story of the year!' and I was just thinking no of course it wouldn't be you fud, it'd just be the latest tedious offering from your never ending conveyer belt of crassness; nobody would be surprised by it and it'd be lucky if it lasted for a quarter of a news cycle.

[Twed]

You're right there's no need for it but it's fucking funny though so let's give it a pass.

I do agree with you, I don't mean to be a sourpuss about it, it's just so frustrating that The Resistance's response to all of this is clucking like dumb chickens and still acting as huge blockers for social change.

[Twed]

Yeah, sorry it was a cheap shot and 2015 style lolTrump humour that isn't helping. But I couldn't resist.

I don't mean anything personal against you aj, it's really the papers and high-profile stupid sods on Twitter that are getting my goat. Forum-level lols are exactly how this stuff should be pitched, it's just upsetting that it's the top headline in today's political news.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

[Bhazor]

The thing you're forgetting is, the key thing you're forgetting, is the thick cunt factor. There are millions of them, thick or senile or lullzy liberal heads exploding cunts who will vote for anyone on the Republican ticket or who rolls their eyes and goes "Its PC gone mad innit?". Christian fundementalists who who's retirement plans are the fucking Rapture. These people will not be swayed by facts, they will not acknowledge counter points, they will not engage in discussion. But maybe if we can turn Trump into actual lizard satan of the three tongued illuminati we can steer them into voting if not someone competent then at least into voting for some harmless third party. Spread rumours voting booths are CIA black op vaccination schemes. Photoshop pictures of Trump with his hair making a 666 shape. Start a Q account and tell them how Trump eats his eggs in the forbidden atlantian style.

[Twed]

I feel like they're more likely to believe Pizzagate than care about any of the shit that we're now all basically desensitised to.

[Howj Begg]

As we're talking about voting motivation, I read this today:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class-trump/

DO YOU REMEMBER "economic anxiety"? The catch-all phrase relied on by politicians and pundits to try and explain the seemingly inexplicable: the election of Donald J. Trump in November 2016? A term deployed by left and right alike to try and account for the fact that white, working-class Americans voted for a Republican billionaire by an astonishing 2-to-1 margin?
The thesis is as follows: Working-class voters, especially in key "Rust Belt" swing states, rose up in opposition to the party in the White House to punish them for the outsourcing of their jobs and stagnation of their wages. These "left behind" voters threw their weight behind a populist "blue-collar billionaire" who railed against free trade and globalization.

Everyone from Fox News host Jesse Waters to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders has pushed this whole "economic anxiety" schtick. But it's a complete and utter myth. As I pointed out in April 2017, referencing both pre-election surveys and exit poll data, the election of Trump had much less to do with economic anxiety or distress and much more to do with cultural anxiety and racial resentment. Anyone who bothers to examine the empirical evidence, or for that matter listens to Trump slamming black athletes as "sons of bitches" or Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" in front of cheering crowds, is well-aware of the source of his appeal.

The problem, however, with trying to repeatedly rebut all this talk of "economic anxiety" is that it's a zombie argument. As Paul Krugman has observed, these are arguments "that have been proved wrong, should be dead, but keep shambling along because they serve a political purpose." Or as the science writer Ben Goldacre has put it, arguments that "survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down."

To be clear: "Economic anxiety" has been shot down repeatedly by the experts over the past 18 months. Four damning studies, in particular, stand out from the rest.  The first appeared in May 2017, a month after I wrote my original piece, when The Atlantic magazine and Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, published the results of a joint analysis of post-election survey data. Did poor, white, working-class voters back Trump in their droves? Was it the economy, stupid?

Nope. The PRRI analysis of more than 3,000 voters, summarized The Atlantic's Emma Green, "suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump." Got that? Hillary Clinton over Trump. Meanwhile, partisan affiliation aside, "it was cultural anxiety — feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment — that best predicted support for Trump."

In fact, according to the survey data, white, working-class voters who expressed fears of "cultural displacement" were three-and-a-half times more likely to vote for Trump than those who didn't share these fears.

Surprise!

Second, in January 2018, a study by three Amherst political scientists — Brian F. Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta — asked: "What caused whites without college degrees to provide substantially more support to Donald Trump than whites with college degrees?" Here's their answer, based on survey data from 5,500 American adults:

We find that racism and sexism attitudes were strongly associated with vote choice in 2016, even after accounting for partisanship, ideology, and other standard factors. These factors were more important in 2016 than in 2012, suggesting that the explicitly racial and gendered rhetoric of the 2016 campaign served to activate these attitudes in the minds of many voters. Indeed, attitudes toward racism and sexism account for about two-thirds of the education gap in vote choices in 2016.

Racism and sexism. Who'd have guessed?

Third, in April 2018, Stanford University political scientist Diana Mutz published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that observed how "living in an area with a high median income positively predicted Republican vote choice to a greater extent in 2016," which is "precisely the opposite of what one would expect based on the left behind thesis." Mutz found no evidence that a decline in income, or a worsening "personal financial situation," drove working-class voters into the welcoming arms of a billionaire property mogul. Nor did a decline in manufacturing or employment in the area where Trump voters lived.

So what did she conclude?

In this election, education represented group status threat rather than being left behind economically. Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women—were most likely to support Trump.

Are you still not convinced? Do you still prefer to cling to a bogus claim that just won't die? Well, the latest zombie-killing study was published last week by the Democracy Fund's Voter Study Group and co-authored by George Washington University political scientist John Sides (both the Democracy Fund and First Look Media, the Intercept's parent company, were created by Pierre Omidyar). The VSG report concluded that the "prevailing narrative" of the 2016 election, focused heavily "on the economic concerns of Americans," and especially "the white working class," is "flawed" and "misplaced."

Sides and his co-author Robert Griffin found that "economic anxiety was actually decreasing, not increasing" in the run-up to the presidential election and "what was distinctive about voting behavior in 2016 was not the outsized role of economic anxiety," but "attitudes about race and ethnicity" that were "more strongly related to how people voted."

According to their study (which focused on a much tighter concept of "economic distress" based on voters' direct experiences with financial instability or hardship):

Contrary to the popular narrative, VOTER Survey results show that economic distress is not distinctively prevalent among the white working class. It is much more a fact of life for people of color. In part because of this, Trump voters in 2016 do not report more economic distress than do Clinton voters. If anything, the opposite is true. ... The political implications of economic distress are mostly negative for President Trump. Among independents in particular, those experiencing economic distress are more likely to disapprove of Trump's performance in office. Therefore, economic distress appears to function as a referendum on Trump's presidency rather than a driver of support. Indeed, genuine economic distress may cost Trump support.

Do I really need to continue? Do I need to cite more studies? More surveys? How can this still be a matter for debate?

To be clear, and to repeat what I wrote last year, this isn't to say that economic grievances are irrelevant, or that racial and cultural grievances were the only drivers of support for Trump. To quote the three academics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, "it would be misguided to seek an understanding of Trump's success in the 2016 presidential election through any single lens. Yet, in a campaign that was marked by exceptionally explicit rhetoric on race and gender, it is perhaps unsurprising to find that voters' attitudes on race and sex were so strongly associated with their vote choices."

So why does this still matter, in 2018? For a start, as Mutz points out, "Trump's victory may be viewed more admirably when it is attributed to a groundswell of support from previously ignored workers than when it is attributed to those whose status is threatened by minorities and foreign countries." Plus, she adds, "elected officials who embrace the left behind narrative may feel compelled to pursue policies that will do little to assuage the fears of less educated Americans."

This is the key point to consider for those on the left who have foolishly, if perhaps with the best of intentions, embraced the "left behind" thesis. They see economic and financial insecurity as the root cause of Trumpism, which they then feel justifies their support for policies such as a higher minimum wage or universal health care. These progressive economic and social policies, however, deserve our support because they're morally and economically correct – and not because they might win over Trump voters in 2020. (Spoiler alert: They won't and they may even further antagonize white working-class voters who see them as "handouts" for non-white working-class voters.)

Both race and class matter, and both have to be at the center of a left-wing, pro-poor, anti-Trump politics. But that doesn't change the fact that, in 2016, race trumped class. The reality, as Mutz reminds us, is that the election of Trump "was an effort by members of already dominant groups to assure their continued dominance and by those in an already powerful and wealthy country to assure its continued dominance."

This is what the left has to challenge. Of course the right wants to exonerate Trump voters from charges of racism, bigotry, and misogyny, but the left has to call it as it is. The Trump election was a "whitelash." It's time to slay this zombie of "economic anxiety" once and for all.

[Paul Calf]

It's a common fascist tactic: portray yourself as bravely defending the working classes and crushing the enemies of democracy and free speech while plotting to sell out the lot to your friends.

Capitalism gone sour.

[Paul Calf]

I mean, we know where the Trump Train terminates, right?

[BlodwynPig]

Is that Darlington station?

[Paul Calf]

Oh, come on. It's not that bad.

[Bhazor]

I've said before, Trump's core is not poor working class people. Its the aged middle classes who *think* they're poor working class. Who want everything to go back to how it was in the good old days when a steel mill would employ 40,000 people, when you could put a nickle in the bank and get a quarter at the end of the month, who remember when you could call a spic a spic, who complain about the rich liberal elite while sitting on the porch of a 5 bedroom house they bought for a year's salary 40 years ago. The exact same group that done Brexit.

[Mister Six]

Jesus Christ a tantrum baby was elected president by trying to incite a race war. Scraping the depths of petty tabloid bullshit isn't necessary

No, but it's fun. I'm sure people here can be both outraged by his white supremacist enabling cryptofascism and used by his ongoing public humiliation.

EDIT: A bit too much.

[Head Gardener]

[Gulftastic]

Tone deaf cunt.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-christine-blasey-ford-sexual-assault_us_5ba4f0a1e4b0375f8f9c3f83

[Alberon]

That's it you orange twunt, keep on pissing off women voters. Give them a good reason to vote against your party, or abstain, come November.

[Bhazor]

Given that more than half of white women voted for Pussy Grabber in chief don't expect a little something like belittling sexual assault victims to change their minds. Again, thick cunt demographics. Roll eyes. PC gone bad. Obama invented racism. Vote Republican.

[ajsmith2]

Benny G keeps as classy as ever.

[mojo filters]

This morning's new NBC / WSJ poll specifically breaking down Kavanaugh demographics, shows a startling change in attitudes from certain cohorts, and a discernable negative trend in general - compared with the previous equivalent polling.

This should give an indication of how voting demographics are breaking, especially now early midterm voting begins very soon in some states. Morning Joe did a good segment on the poll this morning, I expect the official clips will be up on YouTube by now for any folks interested.

I'm not convinced the pundits have got every outcome of the Kavanaugh  (potential) confirmation right. This idea that Republican turnout will be depressed if his confirmation is either delayed or scrapped is very tenuous.

We already know GOP voters were driven to the 2016 polls despite Trump as much as because of him - notably because the Merrick Garland situation put the swing SCOTUS vote front and centre, bringing the prospect of overturning Roe to the forefront.

Nothing has changed since then. Trump has stayed true to his assurance he will only pick pro life justices from the pre-approved Federalist Society list. His big problem here was choosing the last minute addition who appealed due to his hypocritical 2009 position on Presidential judicial vulnerability, despite having been at the heart of the Ken Starr Special Counsel team that enabled the Grand Jury testimony and impeachment proceedings of Bill Clinton.

I suspect that if Kavanaugh ends up too toxic to proceed, all this publicity will drive out the hardcore pro life voters in the midterms.  They know Trump has around 20 equally acceptable replacements for their core issue, the only risk is that Mitch McConnell will not get another candidate through in the lame duck session - Jeff Flake and Bob Corker may prove riskier than Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski in such circumstances, as they might decide on principal not to support the GOP caucus for such an important vote in a lame duck session prior to retirement.

However right now the wheels are moving re Kavanaugh and his accuser. It looks like there will be a very telegenic Senate Judiciary Cmte hearing next week, which no one can predict how it will turn out - except to say the optics have significant potential to polarise opinion.

Regardless of whether Kavanaugh is ultimately confirmed, if his accuser appears sympathetic in the eyes of key demographics such as college educated women - that will likely break in favour of Democratic turnout, potentially turning a blue wave into a tsunami!

However as the orange orangutan likes to say, we'll see what happens...

[manticore]

As we're talking about voting motivation, I read this today:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class-trump/

This argument happened on this thread about a year ago about who voted for Trump, because someone said the votes of 'thick poor people' (or some such phrase) were important in him winning.

IIRC the basic conclusion I came to from reading around was that no, Republicans voted for Trump, pretty much as they would have for any other Republican.

The small amount of Obama voters who switched to Trump are a more complicated issue, but it seems that as the Intercept article suggests, they tended to be socially conservative (but also liked Trump because they didn't think he was an establishment Republican).

[manticore]

I wouldn't normally post this kind of thing, but this is very funny. A lot of people in an election ad saying why they wouldn't vote for a far-right Republican candidate in Arizona. Unfortunately the candidate they're supporting seems to be a standard corporate Democrat, but still there's clearly quite a story behind this.

Crazy stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZuayQFD51w

[Dex Sawash]

^damn

[Howj Begg]

I just saw it too. Poetry.

[Twed]

Benny G keeps as classy as ever.

The red car and the blue car had a race...

[Ferris]

^bit too subtle for me. Is it about the budget?

[ajsmith2]

The red car and the blue car had a race...

Hopefully this is an accurate simulation of how the midterms will go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4drNFXd6dw

Strange that Ben chose to put Christine in a failing beat up RED car. Subconscious admittance of anxiety about November?

[Dex Sawash]

Strange that Ben chose to put Christine in a failing beat up RED car. Subconscious admittance of anxiety about November?

Its Christine the 1957 Plymouth Savoy from the movie "Christine"
Dunno why he's put FORD on the front


Edit- check out this dunce- it is a 1958 not a '57

[ajsmith2]

Its Christine the 1957 Plymouth Savoy from the movie "Christine"
Dunno why he's put FORD on the front


Edit- check out this dunce- it is a 1958 not a '57

Thanks. Never seen the film so missed that. I still think making that reference undermines his political point, so, err... jokes still on him. Kind of.