Don't think they were ever pretending.

More about people staying home or going third-party imo.

Agreed. The Green Party siphons off just enough votes to do real damage, but Dem-E isn't going to offer up anything that might sway those voters to switch.

How big of a vote would Gary Johnson have got if voters truly believed that he had a chance to win? basically voters hated both candidates so much they voted for the other out of spite. IMO anyway.

They were. They've always used the "we make fun of both sides!" excuse while joking about how climate change is a myth and John Kerry was equally as bad as Bush.

So you're saying there was a vast right wing conspiracy to keep Hillary out of office.

Checks out.

Gary Johnson is a broad-shouldered stud, no doubt, but hard to justify voting for him against Flawless Hilary Clinton. Pick your spots Gary!

Do you realize how ****ing stupid Gary Johnson came across as?

It is quite an achievement to be running against Donald Trump and be universally regarded as the dumbest candidate.

Barrel full of laughs with the hanging all the gays joke

so you acknowledge there is no defense of Clinton as a good candidate, beyond 'she would have been a better president than an illiterate, demented reality TV rapist'? that's literally the only thing she had going for her? cool.

there's a ton she would have done better than any of the republican also-rans

Clearly you need to get a sense of humor. And when you do get it you should try it sometime.

It at least implies that Trump doesn't want to kill all the gay people. I credit that to his daughter's moderating influence.

Possibly not walking, though. Hillary Rodham Clouseau.

Not at all, but criticizing her broing out with Kissinger kind of falls apart when the other option is a moron who has to ask why we don't use nukes.

She was a good but uninspiring candidate who lost out to an awful and uninspiring candidate.

I voted for Hillary despite the fact that she was the most distrusted person to run for the office in the last four election cycles. An experienced liar vs an idiotic lunatic was the choice as I saw it. ( Southpark did recycle the turd sandwich label last year.)

If we went into a time machine alternate reality that Hillary won. What would her approval rating be right now 45 percent? Hope she doesn't run again in 3 years. Literally one of the few human beings alive that Trump could actually beat for a 2nd term.

I don't think he'd care if it happens, however, as long as the people doing it also support him somehow.

The thing is I think he has not only succeeded in duping his followers with his racist ****, he has duped his detractors too. He doesn't care about the people in PR, or the dreamers, but he does not care about white people more as a group. He doesn't care about coal miners.He doesn't care about evangelicals. He doesn't care about other rich people. He doesn't care about his political allies. He doesn't care about the flag. He doesn't care about vets. He doesn't even care about his family in any way shape or form other than how any of them help him.

He is just willing to (completely transparently) lie to and pretend to the ones who still have value to him.

Definitely under 40%, but the point of being a good president isn't approval ratings, it's not doing something dumb every day like Trump does.

He may as well have announced to fox news//r/The_Donald/putin, "Gentlemen, start your dog-whistles."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/16/politi...orm/index.html

Super dangerous assuming he can't win again. This is based on a paradigm that said he couldnt win the first time.

They have not even needed to pull out the big guns yet and they will. War. Terrorist attack on US soil. The wall will likely get built. The courts will be stacked. The republicans will be brought to heel by Bannon/Mercer. The Russia investigation will be squashed. The voter fraud angle is being teed up.

It's worse than we pretend.

Eta: non-white terrorist attack, ldo.

Are we talking about the obviously incompetent and unprepared Gary Johnson -- in other words, the real Gary Johnson -- or the fantasy Gary Johnson that exists only the minds of libertarians on the internet.

Hillary's approval ratings wouldn't be much better than Trump's, but her disapproval rating would be a lot lower in any of those polls that let you opt for "meh".

I would say a very bad candidate lost to an unbelievably, insanely awful one, but we're not really that far apart.

my original angry post was in response to the idea that HRC criticism was based on fox news BS and conspiracy and sexism, and not real substantial stuff that created 3rd party support and apathy wrt turnout among PoC, lefty leftists, the poor, etc. because that type of centrist liberal whitewashing of HRC is utterly infuriating and Dems will continue to fail until they deal with it.

Gary wasn't slangin racism around, so he wasn't going to catch on with Trump voters.

The notion that people didn't want to vote for Trump is a myth. LOTS of people loved that racism.