All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Kirby101]

No Trump's approval is not at 49%, that is an outlier. He has remained about 40% for most of his Presidency, it consistence ticks up and down one or two points.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...roval-ratings/

The polls also show that half the voters will not vote for him. He will lose the popular vote again, probably more than last time. But because of the Electoral College, he can take the election, even if he loses by 5 million votes this time.

[Celgress]

Warren is a progressive

I'm not a fan of Warren (the faux Native American thing hit to close to home), however, she is progressive and has been for decades. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Guess those people have never watched "Roger and Me", huh? But hey, Warren is standing in the way of Sanders and by extension his movement thus she is an enemy and has to be a bad person.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Bernie's been such a pussycat compared to some of the other dems. I can see trump steamrolling over him if he gets the nomination.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Bernie's been such a pussycat compared to some of the other dems. I can see trump steamrolling over him if he gets the nomination.

Biden will lose worse and it will hurt the Democratic Party more

[aja_christopher]

Bernie's been such a pussycat compared to some of the other dems. I can see trump steamrolling over him if he gets the nomination.

His supporters seem to think his natural charisma will help him win the election yet refuse to accept that many don't see him as ideally as they do.

He's being protected from real criticism because Democrats don't want to offend his base and Republicans want him to win the primary.

I'm not making the argument that he'll lose -- it's always possible his brand of populism could propel him into office.

Possible, but unlikely.

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"Bernie Sanders arrives at Super Tuesday with momentum built through New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. Five polls have him beating Donald Trump. But here's what will actually happen if Sanders is the nominee.

Trump will drown out any substantive discussion or defense of Sander's policies by stoking voter paranoia about socialism and communism. He'll warn America that a Sanders presidency would destroy the economy. He will invoke his mantra that Medicare for all would "force patients to face massive wait times for treatments and destroy access to quality care." That's false, of course, but facts don't matter to a President who has told more than 16,000 lies.

Trump doesn't even have to lie or invent "facts" to smear Sanders. There are plenty of actual facts he can use. In 1971, Sanders joined the Liberty Union Party of Vermont, which describes itself as a nonviolent socialist party, and became its chairman in 1974. At the time, Sanders advocated a marginal tax rate of 100 percent on income over a million dollars, saying "Nobody should earn more than a million dollars." Trump will exclaim, "So America, no matter how hard you work and how successful you are, Bernie wants the government to take everything you make over a million dollars!"

In 1976 Sanders called for nationalization of American industries, arguing the government or the people should own energy and pharmaceutical companies and banks. Trump will bellow that government ownership of industry is communism and people's ownership is socialism, and he'll be hard to refute.

Trump will conflate past and present, reminding voters that the Democratic Socialists of America recently endorsed Sanders for president and that he still calls himself a Democratic Socialist; ipso facto, Sander's views haven't changed. It won't matter that his socialist affiliations and opinions date back more than 40 years, that he quit the Liberty Union Party in 1977, or that he's modified his views since, just as it didn't matter that Barack Obama wasn't born in Kenya. As late as December 2017, 57 percent of those who voted for Trump still believed it was true.

Trump is a master at smearing opponents, and his smear tactics have worked. His attacks on the media, calling it fake news, dishonest, hateful and the "Enemy of the People," lowered America's trust in the news. It hit a low of 32 percent in September 2016, during the heat of Trump's campaign. By April 2018, 51 percent of Republicans viewed the news media as the enemy instead of an important part of democracy.

Trump's incessant branding of the Mueller investigation as a "witch hunt" cut America's trust in Mueller in half, and not just among Republicans. By March 2019, 54 percent independents also agreed Mueller was on a witch hunt.

His labeling of Mexicans as criminals, though baseless and false, got traction. By 2017, nearly half of Americans agreed with Trump that Mexican immigrants make crime worse. That year, Trump's xenophobic rhetoric and anti-Muslim policies incited a spike in Islamophobia. In California, vandalization of mosques, physical assaults on and discriminatory treatment by federal employees increased 82 percent.

Trump's smears have often turned vicious. When Ben Carson was leading in the Iowa polls, Trump tweeted, "Too much Monsanto in the corn creates issues in the brain," and likened Carson to a child molester. Carson faded, Trump won.

Trump's endless list of demeaning nicknames is childish, yet they somehow seem to stick: "Howdy Doody" and "Alfred E. Newman" for Pete Buttigieg; "High Tax, High Crime" Nancy Pelosi;" "Crooked Hillary," "Pocahontas" for Elizabeth Warren; "low energy" Jeb Bush; Marco Rubio the "clown," "very slow sleepy" Joe Biden; Lyin', cheatin', liddle' Adam "Shifty" Schiff;, "Fake Tears Chuck Schumer;" "Dumbest Man on Television" for Don Lemon, "That bitch" Katy Tur; and "Psycho Joe" Scarborough.

Trump won't relent. His elevated approval rating will embolden him to double down. He'll give Sanders no quarter, and Sanders will prove more vulnerable to Trump's tactics than most, because Americans reject socialism. They prefer capitalism by a two-to-one margin (57 percent to 28 percent). Republicans favor capitalism over socialism ten to one (76 percent to 7 percent). For independents it's close to three to one (59 percent to 23 percent).

Those ratios could be a glimpse of the results of a Sanders-Trump match-up."

https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sand...ominee-1490095

[shooshoomanjoe]

Which explains why Trump was shitting bricks last week when coronavirus reports caused the markets to tank and tank hard. He knows the economy is the ONLY thing keeping his poll numbers from dropping under 40 percent, perhaps well under.

In late January, trump said the coronavirus isa public health emergency. The the market took a tumble and he blamed the free press and leftists.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You guys need to keep it together. With all this infighting Trump is going to walk in like Fortinbras ready for a fight just to find everyone but Horatio dead.

Oh, please. I seriously doubt a bunch of yahoos arguing like cats and dogs in a comic book forum are in any way, shape or form indicative of Democratic voters as a whole. Hell, they'd probably look at us and laugh their asses off at how idiotic we're behaving. In any event, I prefer the sort of spirited (okay, sometimes OVER spirited) back and forth discussions of candidates, ideas and policies that happen with Democrats instead of the Borg-like, hive mind mentality in the GOP that brooks no tolerance of independent thought or criticism. If Republican voters had used their brains and questioned the words and actions of Donald Trump back in 2016 the way Democrats question their representatives instead of gleefully slurping his Kool-Aid and gobbling down the bullshit he spewed, chances are he wouldn't made it past the debates, never mind gotten elected president. Call me naïve, but I prefer the Democrats just the way they are: one big, quarrelsome family that never always agree on everything, but can come together when it matters most. That's what I'm hoping for in the months to come leading up to November.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Mike Turner, a hyper-conservative spoiled rich kid who funded his campaign to join the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2012, and then in 2014, tried to make a jump to run for U.S. Congress in Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District. Of course, it was kind of hard to sell the voters on a fresh-faced neophyte who already made waves by supporting laws to nullify both federal firearms laws and the Affordable Care Act, prevent the dread threat of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Treaty, close all the abortion clinics in Oklahoma, and prevent any municipality from raising its own minimum wage. Worse yet, was Turner making major headlines by having the reaction to rulings on same sex marriage to try to pass legislation to outlaw ALL marriages in his state, a move most realized reeked of the bigoted attempts by segregationists in the 1960s to close down schools rather than have to see races intermingle at them. We can only hope he stays out of politics now that he's spent almost his whole trust fund for what little of a career that he had.



In both 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as in 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its profiles of Todd Russ, a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives who has been allowed to remain in office unopposed now for three full elections, and is perhaps most famous for getting furiously angry that the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, and as Russ put it, “stuck it down our throats” and then writing HB 1125, a bill to take marriage out of the hands of clerks and judges and make the only recognizable marriages in Oklahoma to be performed by churches, who could refuse. He defended his bill, claiming gays, “They don’t have a spiritual basis for a marriage and don’t want to have a clergy member or a priest or someone involved in the spiritual aspect, then they can file an affidavit of common-law marriage.” That would be an easy compromise perhaps if Oklahoma also didn’t recognize common law marriages. Or if in how the bill was worded, it wouldn’t ask for a preacher, minister, priest, rabbi or ecclesiastical dignitary to sign off on the marriage license, which limits the right to marry only to Christians and Jews. For all intents and purposes, Todd Russ was calling for a Christian theocracy, at least on the issue of marriage. Critics immediately noted how poorly that it was written, clearly a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution, and about as unconstitutional as all get out. Todd Russ then went back to the drawing board, and amended his own bill, reinstating the clause that allowed judges to officiate weddings… and other lawmakers pointed out that by doing so, Russ’ bill would require the government to simply file marriage certificates, and remove the state’s ability to prevent instances bigamy or polygamy. I mean, social conservatives like to make the “slippery slope” argument that gay marriage would lead to polygamy… but the idea that it would just potentially come to pass because Republicans are terrible at writing laws was never considered a factor in pushing people down that slope.

The rest of Todd Russ’ legislative record since he took office back in 2009 is as ridiculously conservative as you might expect, as he voted for the Oklahoma GOP's unnecessary prohibition on Sharia Law, their attempt to put a stop to the implementation of climate standards from the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Treaty’s climate change guidelines, their attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act , their attempt to allow students in school to express their religious viewpoints in school, and their attempt to pass “trap laws” that place strict regulations on abortion clinics so strict that they are forced to close. In April of 2016, he angered many by making racist assertations that Native Americans and African Americans are "predisposed to alcoholism", yet was still re-elected.

His current mission in the legislature seems to be trying to find ways to punish any teacher or educator who attempts to walk out to protest insufficient wagers after the successful teachers’ strike in Oklahoma in 2018, even submitting a bill to threaten to withhold their wages and strip them of their credentials if they do so again (neither punishment sounds like it would hold up in court).

Effectively, the times are shifting left, and Todd Russ is a Neanderthal shaking his club impotently at progress, truly a fine example of what the GOP is today. Further indicating that Russ isn’t going anywhere further were how in the past year, while the Oklahoma House of Representatives were discussing legislation to teach teenagers in sex education about “healthy relationships” including discussions about how consent works, and Russ responded to the bill by sarcastically asking, “IS THAT A SNOWFLAKE THING?” (What an ***hole.)

Russ first took office back in 2009, and was narrowly re-elected to a sixth term in 2018, albeit with a far less impressive 53% of the vote. That does not bode well for a guy who will be term-limited in 2020 and desperate to seek out higher office somehow.

[JCAll]

Biden will lose worse and it will hurt the Democratic Party more

That settles it then. We have no choice but to rally behind Warren

[KOSLOX]

And yes, she is not. But a lot 9f people have this kind of thing in their family because, unfortunately there were things going down that lead to people thinking that they may have a Native American blood tie in their family.

I never really cared about that lie.

I grew up with a lot of black women who were "part" Native American. The part was mostly due to the hair blend they bought.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

-----
"Bernie Sanders arrives at Super Tuesday with momentum built through New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. Five polls have him beating Donald Trump. But here's what will actually happen if Sanders is the nominee.

Trump will drown out any substantive discussion or defense of Sander's policies by stoking voter paranoia about socialism and communism.

You could've stopped right there. That sentence alone is all you need to know about how Trump can, and will take Sanders apart like a kid with a cheap toy on Christmas morning. People hate what they fear, and the tag team of socialism and communism remains perhaps the top bogeymen in the minds or Americans today.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

That settles it then. We have no choice but to rally behind Warren

Our best bet at this point is for Trump to be visited by 3 ghosts sometime soon

[aja_christopher]

I never really cared about that lie.

I grew up with a lot of black women who were "part" Native American. The part was mostly due to the hair blend they bought.

I heard a lot of that as well about my family line but it turned out to be German instead when the DNA report came in.

The bottom line is that it's a pathetic smear of Trump-level intellect.

[KOSLOX]

I heard a lot of that as well about my family line but it turned out to be German instead when the DNA report came in.

The bottom line is that it's a pathetic smear of Trump-level intellect.

A lot of people have family mythology that doesn't hold up.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I heard a lot of that as well about my family line but it turned out to be German instead when the DNA report came in.

The bottom line is that it's a pathetic smear of Trump-level intellect.

A smear he'd hammer Warren to death with if she were the candidate. I shudder to imagine the slurs he'd unleash on Buttigieg if he made it that far. And Trump would get away with it too.