Seriously how can anyone support Donald Trump?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

My take on Obamacare is that what Obama wanted was national health care which the Republicans don't want and blocked every step of the way. Obama had to compromise it again and again until what we ended up with was a convoluted imitation of what he wanted. Ironically, what we ended up with was essentially Dolecare. This was the plan Bob Dole's campaign was proposing in 1996 and the Republicans were supporting it. Obama dusted it off, changed it a little and essentially threw it at the Republicans with the idea that they would look like hypocrites to turn it down since it was essentially their plan. In fact, what they were criticizing every step of the way was the same plan the Republicans would have implemented had Dole won.

Even that thing about keeping your plan was intended as yet another compromise to get national health care through, a compromise that would have made it impossible for it to work.

Attachment 81831

What those Republicans didn't want was a BLACK MAN proposing that healthcare policy. If that sounds like tinfoil hat level conspiracy theory, so be it, I'll go to my grave believing the GOP would rather the country gone down the proverbial toilet than let an African-American president have any sort of political victory.

[Malvolio]

I think they would have done the same to any Democratic President. Look at how they destroyed Hillary Clinton's attempt at universal health care in the 1990s. The racism was just the icing on their cake.

[Michael Watkins]

they dislike women AND black people. problem solved.

[Xheight]

If you're not healthy, then you can't work and support your family. That makes healthcare an important issue. And if you think for more than one nanosecond that Trump cares about the working class, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.

Did I say that I think he does? If you stick to the point it is about what a sizable part of his base is the working class and he is messaging more than just hate and fear but actually addressing something real and substantial. The Democrats Healthcare reminds me a lot of what politicians in Mexico used to do in giving people free stuff 4 votes. Sure a free chicken or Healthcare is great but if you have a crap job that keeps you below the poverty line whose interest is that really in?

[Xheight]

So we shouldn't trust government, but we should trust a businessman who's filed for bankruptcy, what is it? four times? Trust a businessman who has a reputation for not paying his partners? Come on.

Oh, and BTW, I think we can excuse Obama for thinking that people wouldn't want to keep shitty health care plans. But I guess when a plan is cheap and you don't know how shitty it really is because you've never filed a claim on it for a catastrophic illness, you won't like when you have to pay a little more for a plan that offers better coverage.

I don't think that was what he was saying. Less government would mean less Trump too.
I'm thinking of the infrastructure issue as it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that local governments could just as well be addressing this if they have the money and all the power wasn't surrendered to the federal government to solve our issues. The Washington mindset is that it's a great bipartisan issue because all the decision-making will still be made in Washington.

[Spike-X]

Bull? So tell me what keeps you from identifying with your class?

The ability to read without moving my lips.

[Spike-X]

...a sizable part of his base is the working class and he is messaging more than just hate and fear but actually addressing something real and substantial.

Yeah, but he's not though. Seriously, what has he done apart from mouth empty promises to re-open coal mines, and slap tariffs on imported steel that end up costing the US economy billions?

Sure a free chicken or Healthcare is great but if you have a crap job that keeps you below the poverty line whose interest is that really in?

The Republicans who keep fighting tooth and nail against paying anyone a living wage?

Seriously, is every day opposite day on your planet?

[motherofpearl1]

I'm British. Our Conservative government has crippled the country with their cruel austerity measures. Sick and disabled people are treated as a drain on society, knife crime is an epidemic not helped by massive cuts to public services, and even those in work are having to use foodbanks.

Yet my fellow Brits have voted them in three times. I will never understand people.

[DavidRA]

This is the problem with politics today. People make absolutely no attempt to understand their opponents, who are of course their neighbours, colleagues and friends. Instead they insult them. We need to learn how to accept other views and to compromise.

[Tendrin]

This is the problem with politics today. People make absolutely no attempt to understand their opponents, who are of course their neighbours, colleagues and friends. Instead they insult them. We need to learn how to accept other views and to compromise.

When those views are 'you should not exist', it is very difficult to do so. There's an implicit idea in conversations about this thatthe understanding must be from left to right rather than vice-versa. It is a constant undercurrent in the conversation. And it is /exhausting/ to demand such one sided emotional labor. Frequently, nothing is asked of the other side in the equation all too often.

[TriggerWarning]

This is the problem with politics today. People make absolutely no attempt to understand their opponents, who are of course their neighbours, colleagues and friends. Instead they insult them. We need to learn how to accept other views and to compromise.

But its so much easier to decry all who voted for Trump as racist and unintelligent rather than perhaps see that they didn't feel like Hilary Clinton cared one bit for them since they were the rural white working class rather than the urban coastal elites and minorities. Hilary Clinton never even tried to appeal the white working class, the only time she acknowledged them was when she called them deplorable. It cost her the election. I don't think Trump actually cares either but he at least tried to appeal to them.

[Tendrin]

But its so much easier to decry all who voted for Trump as racist and unintelligent rather than perhaps see that they didn't feel like Hilary Clinton cared one bit for them since they were the rural white working class rather than the urban coastal elites and minorities. Hilary Clinton never even tried to appeal the white working class, the only time she acknowledged them was when she called them deplorable. It cost her the election. I don't think Trump actually cares either but he at least tried to appeal to them.

As has been said: Are all Trump supporters racist as individuals? Perhaps. Perhaps not. They all didn't /mind/ his racism, however, and certainly he has empowered racists if the huge surge in hate crimes is any indication. If you support Trump, you enable the racist policies of him and his party. You don't get to dodge that while crying about the left being meanyfaces and judging them about it.

[Username taken]

Trump's only been in office for just over two years but what he has done is far more insidious. So putting children in cages after separating them from their mothers is not so bad? Trump and those he put in place at FEMA have ignored Puerto Rico (and so has the press for the most part) after tossing them a few paper towels. He's never spoken out about the Russian interference during the 2016 election. He tries to find a way to punish those who don't support him blindly. He gives credence to crack pot issues like the Deep State and discredits legitimate journalism as Fake News. He still hasn't directly spoken out about the white nationalists in Charlottesville. Just the other day and insists they were only there because they admired Robert E. Lee. I don't recall any chanting about Robert E Lee by the Tiki Torch marchers

Quoted for truth.

[TriggerWarning]

As has been said: Are all Trump supporters racist as individuals? Perhaps. Perhaps not. They all didn't /mind/ his racism, however, and certainly he has empowered racists if the huge surge in hate crimes is any indication. If you support Trump, you enable the racist policies of him and his party. You don't get to dodge that while crying about the left being meanyfaces and judging them about it.

If you supported Hilary Clinton then you didn't mind her racism - do you recall her super predators comment about black males? And you didn't mind her homophobia as she supported her husband passing Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Acts and her own votes as she continued to fight against gay marriage as recently as 2013 - her views only changed when she started running for president and had to start claiming to support gay rights to win the nomination. Do I believe she's changed or she was just pandering? I absolutely believe the latter as society had come around to supporting gay marriage early in Obama's first term but she was still fighting against it into his second term.

As to a surge in hate crimes, are you so sure there has been one or is it just the definitions have been expanded to include more things which gives the illusion that they are happening more? Its certainly the latter in my state where hate crime legislation didn't use to include crimes against gays but now does. To which we suddenly saw a surge in reported hate crimes. The actual crime rate has gone down but the changed definition of what constitutes a hate crime created the illusion of a spike in crimes against gays.

[Tendrin]

If you supported Hilary Clinton then you didn't mind her racism - do you recall her super predators comment about black males? And you didn't mind her homophobia as she supported her husband passing Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Acts and her own votes as she continued to fight against gay marriage as recently as 2013 - her views only changed when she started running for president and had to start claiming to support gay rights to win the nomination.

Psst. This is a stupid comment. And here's why: the crime bill of those days was supported and asked for by the congressional black caucus. The whole line on super predators was BS, BS pushed by russian troll farms and the Trump campaign both in the interests of depressing the black vote, swallowed up by misogynists and berners to be used against Hillary in the primaries. And I am not gonna go after Hillary for her hubsand's Don't Ask Don't Tell, which by the way was a step up from the status-quo in the 90s. What you're revealing here is that you lack an accurate understanding of both Hillary's history, Bill's history, the history of American civil rights. Lastly, Hillary had no vote for gay marriage in 2013 because /she had already been the secretary of state/ already and no longer in a position to vote on anything in congress.

I'll hold Hillary's feet to the fire on gay rights and mass incarceration when she's president rather than rank whataboutism when we're dealing with a guy who nakedly calls Mexicans rapists and institutes a religiously-minded ban on Muslim immigration and tells us that there are 'very fine people on both sides' when one of those sides included nazis and people okay with marching with nazis.

As to a surge in hate crimes, are you so sure there has been one or is it just the definitions have been expanded to include more things which gives the illusion that they are happening more? Its certainly the latter in my state where hate crime legislation didn't use to include crimes against gays but now does. To which we suddenly saw a surge in reported hate crimes. The actual crime rate has gone down but the changed definition of what constitutes a hate crime created the illusion of a spike in crimes against gays.

Yes. There's a surge in hate crimes.

Hate crime reports increased 17 percent last year from 2016, the F.B.I. said on Tuesday, rising for the third consecutive year as heated racial rhetoric and actions have come to dominate the news.

Of the more than 7,100 hate crimes reported last year, nearly three out of five were motivated by race and ethnicity, according to the annual report. Religion and sexual orientation were the other two primary motivators.

Your opinion here is nonsense and unsupported by facts, designed to placate and protect your own POV. It is not backed up by data, by facts. The crime rate going down on the whole does not mean there is no an uptick in individual types of crimes. Trump has empowered racists. It is not supporters of anyone else who marched down streets shouting 'JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US'. It is no one else's rallies that have poeple shouting 'JEW-S-A' at the media.