the claim was one third of trump supporters not all online traffic. the answer is does it really matter considering that 2/3 believe the exact same things..? heh. it does matter. kind of. just not quite as much as the hype. I wrote this on behalf of the FSB full disclosure.

If they hold senate, the main fig leaf to block her SC nominations will be to say somebody so corrupt as her can't name judges; why, look at all the investigations shes under, she would potentially be appointing judges that would preside over her impeachment or something, must protect the constitution. Very ****able chicken I would think.

More Samantha Bee,

They don't need anything this coherent. It's the same problem that has plagued the political culture for like a decade now: ~35-40% of the country and therefore maybe 75% of the GOP, maybe more, certainly a huge portion of their primary voters and donors and activists, simply do not give a **** and have absolutely thrown away any notion of shared civic norms or interest in compromise. Or frankly governance.

They don't even need reasons for obstruction anymore. Their Presidential candidate is literally threatening to jail Clinton. Cruz has already said there's no need to vote on a SCOTUS nominee if HRC wins. There will be no blowback. No repercussions. Sure, they'll lose the Presidency, ho hum. They might even get drubbed in these Congressional elections but they'll be back in 2018. Literally any chicken is a ****able chicken for the right so long as it's in line with the dominance politics of "do whatever intransigent right-wingers say." Everything after that is window dressing. No need to signal too much beyond that.

When a huge percentage of the country is convinced the President is an illegitimate unindicted co-conspirator to inchoate crimes against America, GOP senators don't even need articulate reasons anymore for their behavior. HRC doesn't get SCOTUS nominees because she's a crooked criminal, end of story, move along, maybe SCOTUS can have 9 nominees again in 2020 after President Rubio Cruz Thiel Hannity or whoever the **** wins, but until then, sorry. The dominant political media is ill equip for a variety of reasons to explain the transgressions by the right here, and frankly it doesn't matter since ~40% of the country simply DGAF what any of them have to say anyway.

I think it's on Democrats at this point. Or some sort of counter political movement. Don't gaze longingly at the media or wait for some other non-partisan institution to fix this. We've already now seen the nation's top law enforcement agency fall prey to genuflecting to these right-wing pressures into bizarre servile nonsense (Comey's letter) followed by some almost as troubling Red Scare leaks as some sort of counter narrative from rouge agents or anonymous "veteran spies" (Trump/Russia server, talkin' straight to the Kremlin) or whatever the ****. The infection of civic dysfunction is spreading.

They are trying to elect Caligula for some reason.

Why do we think a vast majority of Christians are Christians first and Republicans second? Or Christians first, and not racist white dudes first?

This is one of those things where I'm forced to shrug a little bit; I get intuitively that given the right's moral posturing over the last few decades, the right-wing Christian support for Trump is surprising, but a lot of that Christian moral posturing **** was basically signaling soft white supremacy and other deplorable sentiments once they became uncouth. "Conservative Christians" as led by Falwell, Pat Robertson, Paul Weyrich, et al used Christian window dressing to further white male patriarchy ideals: keep the blacks out of our institutions, keep the women under our heels, etc.

Once you get the history and the background correctly sorted out, their embrace of Trump is totally sensible. He embodies what they were really after. I think this was and is predictable and I wrote a bunch about during the primary season why Trump wasn't going to suffer in the south versus Cruz; he was instead going to flourish.

Without being offensive by marking anyone for naivete, anyone who remains surprised your standard issue right-wingy Christian guy from the South or whatever are part of Trump's staunchest supporters just simply doesn't "get it" and is functionally a mark for the signaling. Most of the conservative Christian movement gave white male patriarchal ideals a convenient moral cover in a society increasingly hostile to those ideals. That's it, full stop. Trump as Savior, Making America Great Again -- that whole schtick is wrapped up in the crystal clear evidence that he's a warrior for a return to that society they envision. Christ ain't got **** to do with it and frankly never did. vixator, zikzak, whoever else (I lose track, sorry if I'm getting this wrong) are going to be by to say I'm an out of touch liberal blah blah meow chow but I've been consistent on this for literally years, I think 2016 proves the point beyond the shadow of a doubt. Yeah sure whatever there's some random nice grandma Sunday school teacher in the South who is just in it for Jesus and doesn't have a hateful bone in her body, granted, and yeah when you're talking about something that is measured by literally tens of millions of people you're always going to have exceptions and forced to rely a little bit on an 80/20 kind of heuristic whereby some examples fall out and the mass phenomenon described applies to 80% of cases, not 100%. Still, the mass political movement on display here is basically how I've described it though: Conservative Christianity was superficial social norm building to express stuff that became impolite to express, namely that white dudes should have all the power in society. Trump embodies that. He just dispensed with the superficial stuff.

eBay is correct that the more extreme ends of religion are commonly politics in a thin disguise but there's also a good dollop of 'my enemies enemy'

It just seems like the corollary of the whole liberal Catholics take communion, oh noes, what abouttery their gay marriage and abortion apostasy, someone alert the pope. Like Biden and John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi give a ****. Please.

I almost want to be a little apologetic for angry white dudes and say, look, why can't they have their Sunday hobbies in peace? Of course their religious posturing is wholly insincere and wound up in a bunch of fiction. That's the name of the game, right?

The only thing that's galling is when we give them the space to self-aggrandize their moral nonsense about how Bill Clinton is an adulterer tut tut think of the American soul, vote Trump for your Christian conscience. That is utter bull**** and we should call that out.

So long as they're just like, welp, you know what, come to think of it Trump is great and #MAGA, BUILD THAT WALL LOCK HER UP and they leave their trite moralizing for their Sunday storytime with the pastor or whatever, I don't see it as a big problem or grand hypocrisy. Hardly any Christians follow any of that stuff, it's just a fictional stuff they're all toting around anyway. The only problem was anyone who looked credibly on the tut tuting about Bill Clinton banging ladies or their screeching about dead aborted babies or demands to Teach the Controversy as anything to give a **** about, like it came from some sincere Biblical place after they prayed on it. It didn't. Once you dispense of that I think we can basically leave the Christian conservative moniker behind and call them 'conservatives' or right-wingers or whatever and lump them in with everyone else, their behavior proves out they're not really some separate coalition within the party. They're all just right-wingers motivated by basically the same stuff -- lecherous poors are taking their things, blacks and Muslims and ladies are dismantling their power structures -- the only difference is the cosplay they engage in. Falwell, Robertson et al said basically all that stuff then added a prayer at the end. Chris Christie yelled at people and ate a sandwich. Ted Cruz said it all then retreated to him vampire lair to plot out how to put it into action. Donald Trump tweet storms about it if a lady gets out of line or if a judge says bad things about him. We're not talking about drastically different points of view here, just stylistic differences.

Evangelicals are just as much into wife swapping as anybody else, maybe more so. Difference is the next morning they go pray for forgiveness and spend some time building homes for homeless people.

Prior to the latest Comey statement, I had high hopes that Trump would be thoroughly trounced in the election and would fade away quickly due to sheer embarrassment. Now, although the result of the election may not change, it will be closer, and sadly, that will keep Trump relevant.

Trump for President rallies will simply change to "lock her up" rallies. Trump is really only in it for the adoration and attention anyway, and this now works out perfectly for him. He'll be more offended and offensive than ever. I wouldn't be surprised if he goes on what amounts to a concert tour and charges admission to his performances.

well he will invite them to the party but unfortunately it'll be serving fruit more than, you know, RomeWorld. that or picking it. picking the fruit and the... I'll just stop.

Dvaut I don't recall disagreeing on those broad strokes. They are certainly true. I do remember saying something about looking for defections within the never Trump crowd of Evangelicals. They do exist. It isn't a large group. But you don't need a large group to sew change. These are the people who are most likely to cause further defections within the diehard camp, over time. Because they speak the cultural language. I'm talking about basically long-term counterinsurgency strategy.

Now trump wants to go to congress to get money for the wall and then send the bill to Mexico later. But ofc no one is going to vote for that. So like many have predicted it will never happen.

Same with mass deportations, requires huge amounts of money that congress wont give him.

So reportedly he isnt talking so much about the wall anymore at his rallies, only if the crowd starts shouting for the wall he will talk about it.

And of course the tax cuts he proposed is no longer what he advocates, they have been rewritten and are in practice now the ryan tax cuts.

also I said very specifically to bury them as much as possible as far as the culture wars are concerned. press the needle until they scream. then make a better needle. repeat. if any of this sounds like apologetics, you're scaring me.

So he hired very good accountants. Should that be construed as a negative?


FWIW If they can call PA before 10 est Hillary walks away with this election. If not it's going to be a long night before we find out who is the winner.

In other words, he's no different than the "Career politicians" that he loathes...

Interesting Talking Point right here to be asserting so strongly.

Well, the way to convince the faithful is to make this case that Hillary Clinton (or Obama, or whoever) is an actual demon. So you get:

Four in 10 Donald Trump supporters think Hillary Clinton 'is an actual demon'

And, yes, some people were having fun with that poll. But here in the South this is an actual belief. The "seizures" she's been having are just more evidence. The whole idea is to take rationality out of the equation and boil political discourse down to good vs. evil.

I have a libertarian friend who thinks Clinton is "evil" and regularly talks about how liberals are "evil," but is an amazingly nice guy in every other respect. My older brother is a Trump supporter--really nice person (though, honestly, a bit racist), selfless in many, many ways--but does the same "liberals are evil" schtick on Facebook. He knows my wife and I are liberal, but I guess we are just dumb or something? I don't know. I try to avoid political discussions.

Are Catholic or religious Democrats tying their faith to their vote in the same way that southern Baptists/evangelicals are, though? I see an occasional "Jesus said take care of the poor" type stuff for supporting social programs and treating minorities with respect and decency or whatever, but I don't see the same type of "God led me to support Trump/Cruz/whoever" or "Christian values will save the country, vote X" on the left, but I could be missing it because I've spent most of my life surrounded by the evangelical types.

Maybe was the part where I said a lot of it was cultural posturing. Well, it is. You even agreed with me afterwards that there was not going to be an outbreak of mass violence... specifically for that reason (posturing).

Economy has grown steadily? Nonsense. We haven't even had a real economic recovery. Fed can't even raise interest rates a microscopic 1/4th of 1 single point and have been bluffing for over 2 years on raising it that tiny amount. This fake recovery has been papered over with suppressed 0% interest rates and QE infinity which has resulted in us being in a bigger bubble than the housing bubble and tech bubble combined.

At least you admit there will be a recession/correction, but it seems like you think it will be just a typical run of the mill recession and you are way off. Holding interest rates as low as they have for as long as they have and going into more debt to fuel consumption will assuredly result in a sovereign debt collapse and currency crisis, and we will be much worse off than we were during the great depression.

I don't think you understand that horrific serious economic imbalances in this country as a result of all the monetary heroin that has been injected into the system since 2008. The govt wouldn't let us have a recession and a recession is part of the cure. And the comedown is going to be multiple times worse than if we took our medicine back in 08 and let the free market re-work without the govt getting involved.

Obama accomplished all the outlandish economic goals Mitt Romney promised when he was running for President in 2012. Very low unemployment, steady growth, and a solid recovery overall. But since Democrats can never get credit for anything, the right wing has decided the numbers are fake, BLS is in the tank for Obama, and the truth is unemployment is north of 25%. It's just another way of delegitimizing the Democratic party.

if youre not panicking at this point then i dont know why tbh

Because he's down 15 in Pennsylvania and 5 in nc/nv?
(And it's a tracking poll)

Don't fret or wet, vote and volunteer.