[VOX] How the Republican Party went from Lincoln to Trump - General

There was no conspiracy, it was done out in the open [URL="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774"]per the people doing it[/URL]. Much like the republicans did with Romney, the DNC higher ups threw all their eggs in the wrong basket, those are facts, not assumptions. Clinton being a better president than Trump is very likely to be true, Clinton being the bulwark bastion of the progressive democratic march is delusional at best, at best it likely would have been a warbling holding of the status quo, instead of the open faced trash fire we currently enjoy.

[QUOTE=27X;53007037]Your fanciful assumption she would have kept ANY of her promises other than deregulating wall street and beefing up defense spending are pure speculation. The assumption that the democratic program would have continued unhindered especially in a republican controlled legislative branch are more likely wishful thinking than anything else. Secondly the DNC did not "vote on policy", they colluded, they lied, and they attempted to alter outcomes same as the republicans did, except by and large they were actually more successful at it, and here we are. 👌[/QUOTE] Citation desperately needed

[QUOTE=27X;53007356]There was no conspiracy, it was done out in the open [URL="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774"]per the people doing it[/URL]. Much like the republicans did with Romney, the DNC higher ups threw all their eggs in the wrong basket, those are facts, not assumptions. Clinton being a better president than Trump is very likely to be true, Clinton being the bulwark bastion of the progressive democratic march is delusional at best, at best it likely would have been a warbling holding of the status quo, instead of the open faced trash fire we currently enjoy.[/QUOTE]I don't really deny that the DNC had their aims and goals, they're an independent organization, of course they will. The degree of which, however, and the "success" at altering what could have happened otherwise, are near impossible to reasonably pin down. Anyways, no response to the fact that candidates fulfil most of their promises along with what the DNC platform released with? And hell there's also Clinton's mostly consistently liberal voting record. Like you actually sound like you've marched in with the conclusion you want to have and don't care about what anything else has to say.

Democrats aren't much better either. If they had any integrity whatsoever, Sanders would be in the white house right now. You can complain all you want about Trump, but the fact is that the Democrats gave away the win by cockblocking the people's candidate and forcing the far less charismatic Shillary on the ballot. It's the biggest political fuckup in decades.

[QUOTE=Vodkavia;53007960][url]http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/promise-kept/[/url] Obama kept a majority of his promises. [editline]26th December 2017[/editline] Just conveniently leaving out; -Trump only won using the electoral system, a system that's heavily rigged in favour of his supporter base. [B]A majority of voters preferred hillary. [/B] -Trump won with the backing of the Russian government. -GoP voters have become openly tolerant of rapists, child molesters, manchildren, concentration camp runners and otherwise persons wholly unfit and unqualified for office so long as it sticks it to dem libs lel XD!1111[/QUOTE] A slim majority of voters in an election with low voter turn out chose Clinton over Trump. Neither candidate was popular. The Democrats still fucked themselves by working against Bernie Sanders instead of actually working against the Republicans. Even if Clinton managed to become the party nominee (which BTW I think is the dumbest electoral system ever) while the Democrates actually campaigned against Trump rather than their own fucking people they would have won in a landslide, rather than winning the popular vote but losing in the electoral college (just like what happened with Al Gore).

I hope Clinton's loss gives the democratic party some much needed time for introspection. Maybe they can stop campaigning against the left and right.

[QUOTE=V12US;53007771]Democrats aren't much better either. If they had any integrity whatsoever, Sanders would be in the white house right now. You can complain all you want about Trump, but the fact is that the Democrats gave away the win by cockblocking the people's candidate and forcing the far less charismatic Shillary on the ballot. It's the biggest political fuckup in decades.[/QUOTE] From the 2016 election, it was either "Are you for or Against Trump" It was almost never people for Hillary. I do not recall meeting anyone who was openly saying they support Hillary because they agree with any plans she had. So the broken shambles of the GOP got abused by Trump who just swung right into office. And the DNC was caught up in its own corruption and tried to shill another Clinton into office. American Politics certainly are a spectacle.

If you had more than two flavors of mainstream political parties, you wouldn't be stuck rationalizing that because chocolate tastes better than very chocolate, chocolate must automatically be the best taste.

[QUOTE=V12US;53008973]If you had more than two flavors of mainstream political parties, you wouldn't be stuck rationalizing that because chocolate tastes better than very chocolate, chocolate must automatically be the best taste.[/QUOTE] We need a new voting and legislative system to enable third parties to succeed but at present, all third parties in existence are absolute jokes. It'd even help the two main parties too, because they'd be able to exert stronger control over their members to have some semblance of uniformity like in other countries. Our de facto "third parties" run as Democrats/Republicans, or independents but they caucus with the two, and then we wind up with factions within the parties. We've seen a lot of what the Republican revolters can do, and while Democrats generally do a better job unifying to get things done, I wouldn't rely on it. They were a part of why Obamacare was a fairly neutered bill.

This whole argument is also entirely dependent on the pure speculation that Sanders would've won in the first place. You can't say that the DNC put all of their eggs into the wrong basket when there's no guarantee that the other basket would've resulted in a different outcome.

[QUOTE=V12US;53008973]If you had more than two flavors of mainstream political parties, you wouldn't be stuck rationalizing that because chocolate tastes better than very chocolate, chocolate must automatically be the best taste.[/QUOTE] What is the purpose of this comment? Is there anyone here suggesting that the Democrats are perfect?

[QUOTE=Duck M.;53009177]This entire argument is also entirely dependent on the pure speculation that Sanders would've won in the first place.[/QUOTE] You're opening a dangerous box of speculation and misery. Beware.

I'll say this, going off of how Clinton lost by spending the entire election ignoring rural america, it leaves me with a worry that she may have continued to do so during her presidency and ultimately caused the pendulum to swing right somehow even harder than it did in 2016. She had more than a few PR flubs during the campaign, too. Not as many as Donald, but it feels at times like you don't seem to need as many when you're running for the left these days; not to mention that he was a populist and a lot of people who voted for Hillary didn't really love her in the first place. Sometimes I feel like this current shitshow might be the better outcome in the long run, hopefully show some of the people who voted for him how insane he really is and how the current republican party treats them. At least delay the pendulum swinging right again for awhile.

That's an open question that anyone can ultimately project their own notions of what Hilary Clinton is onto. I doubt she would completely ignore rural areas but imo Republicans would make they're lives worse in order to spite prez Clinton. They did the same thing under Obama.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;53009277]I'll say this, going off of how Clinton lost by spending the entire election ignoring rural america, it leaves me with a worry that she may have continued to do so during her presidency and ultimately caused the pendulum to swing right somehow even harder than it did in 2016. She had more than a few PR flubs during the campaign, too. Not as many as Donald, but it feels at times like you don't seem to need as many when you're running for the left these days; not to mention that he was a populist and a lot of people who voted for Hillary didn't really love her in the first place. Sometimes I feel like this current shitshow might be the better outcome in the long run, hopefully show some of the people who voted for him how insane he really is and how the current republican party treats them. At least delay the pendulum swinging right again for awhile.[/QUOTE] The main issue is that the Republicans are ignoring rural areas too. They might pander, but they aren't doing much either. There isn't really much that can specifically be done at all, really, save for a few population centers being resuscitated through things like focusing on education, immigration, etc. (Columbus, ann arbor, Milwaukee, as examples.) It's just economically unfeasible for most these areas to thrive when they don't have a reason for people to be there, as growing efficiency of farming/resource harvesting/manufacturing reduces the need for "support" small towns. In fact I'd say republicans are accelerating the decline of the Midwest by leaving schools unfunded, sabotaging Medicaid, and whatnot.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;53009542]The main issue is that the Republicans are ignoring rural areas too. They might pander, but they aren't doing much either. There isn't really much that can specifically be done at all, really, save for a few population centers being resuscitated through things like focusing on education, immigration, etc. (Columbus, ann arbor, Milwaukee, as examples.) It's just economically unfeasible for most these areas to thrive when they don't have a reason for people to be there, as growing efficiency of farming/resource harvesting/manufacturing reduces the need for "support" small towns. In fact I'd say republicans are accelerating the decline of the Midwest by leaving schools unfunded, sabotaging Medicaid, and whatnot.[/QUOTE] I never said anything otherwise, just that I got the impression from how she ran that she might do a bad job of addressing their concerns as well and ever since the start of the Obama presidency the Republican strategy has been "convince rural america that the democrats fucking hate them and that we're their only salvation." A large part of rural america fucking [I]loathed[/I] Clinton even more than some of them loathed Obama, and unless her presidency was absurdly good at addressing the plight of the midwest (which isn't an easy problem to address in the first place) the GOP would probably be working overtime on convincing the everyman that literally everything bad in their lives is the democrats' fault. Of course this is all wildly speculative, but we could've ended up with a worse red wave than the one we had in 2016. That's my unqualified thinking. For the record I didn't vote conservative last election, I don't vote conservative period. This is sort of wishful thinking I had after the election, maybe-it'll-all-turn-out-for-the-best-anyway.