Politics The 2016 US Presidential Election

I blame the Democrats for not realizing that they were losing the blue collar workers in the 80s and 90s. The conservatives turned the non-union workers against the unions. Telling them that businesses would be able to hire more and pay better if unions didn't exist. That if you worked hard, you would do better. And that unions only helped the lazy and corrupt avoid getting fired.

The Democrats and Republicans helped pass trade deals that benefited big corporations and tax dodgers, but didn't really affect small town America except for when the big employer moved their jobs to a different state or out of the country.

Now it seems the Democrats are just a loose collation of activists for a bunch of different issues. And there is plenty of in-fighting on the left. If a professional version of Trump would have been the Republican candidate from the start, I'm not sure if he wouldn't win 350+ votes in the electoral college against Hillary. Well, that is if the right-wing media wouldn't brand him as being "not conservative enough". There are plenty of independent white working class people around here who aren't a big fan of immigration, gun control, LGBT rights, PC minority issues, or cutting the military. And the Democrats aren't doing a good enough job of explaining why their ideas and proposals on those issues would be better for the typical voter in the Midwest, Southeast and rural America.

 

The next problem, is that even if The Sanders supporters do vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination, that the left tends to pack up and disregard all things politics for 3.5 years.

And after Clinton, I think you will see most candidates resembling an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders type of left wing Democrat either in 4 or 8 years.

 

I am still supporting Bernie, and highly approve of his decision to remain in the campaign until the last primary is over. That said, I am certainly enough of a realist to see that it is a virtual certainty at this point that Hillary will be the nominee.

Yes, that angers me because I think it represents a victory of big money and party machinery over a grassroots-oriented campaign free of large corporate interests. And because it represents the passive gullibility of so much of the American public to accept both whatever the mainstream media has fed them, and also the slick spin of the Clinton machine.

However, I am also enough of a realist to know that as distasteful as I find Hillary, her common, everyday political sleaziness pales to virtual insignificance next to the titanic greed, ignorance, hatemongering, lunacy, and utterly feckless fuckwaddery that is Donald Trump. I think Hillary would be bad for America; but no worse than most presidents, and perhaps even slightly better than some (hard to outdo Reagan, Bush Jr., Harding, Franklin Pierce, and guys like that for shagnastic douchebagism). But Trump would be an absolute and total cataclysm, for America and for the world as a whole.

If and when the moment comes when Bernie suspends his campaign, or if and when Hillary is nominated at the convention, I will vote for her, and I will loudly encourage all sane people-- Bernie supporters, other Democrats, independents, moderate Republicans, whoever-- to vote for her as well.

I have been voting in national elections my whole life based on the principle of damage control. This year will apparently be no different. And the damage control issue is real, and vital.

But my willingness to vote for Hillary and to encourage all and sundry to vote for Hillary in order to defeat Trump does not mean I support her. It means that I am not crazy enough to let the legitimate criticisms of her become a vehicle for someone way more evil and infinitely more batshit insane to become president instead. I see no reason to protest America's stupidity at failing to support a real progressive reform candidate by instead electing the human equivalent of a barrel of shit mixed with nitroglycerin.

 

I don't think Trump has that much support. He's had, what, 11 million people vote for him in primaries? That's nothing.

 

This sums up whats ahead for Trump:

"Donald Trump is someone who jumped out a 100-story window and is at floor 50, and thinks he knows how to fly."

Trump's Daunting General Election To-Do List.

And this is beyond having to explain his crazy ass policy proposals in far greater detail than he has to-date.

 

Trump being elected POTUS is possible. My feeling is there are a large number of voters who might decide "Why not vote for Trump?".

I see him as a buffoon who presents a lot of ridiculous ideas. The thing is lot of people like what they hear from him, and don't care if much of what he proposes is totally unworkable.

 

Trump's incredibly condescending & insulting effort to reach out to "Hispanics" almost shocked me. It would've been unbelievable coming from anybody............other than Trump.

 

It sucks.

And yes, Trump is actually far right. Dude wants to screen people at the border for being Muslim. He wants to try and deport everyone here illegally, regardless of circumstances. He thinks the answer to Da'esh and other terrorists is "bomb the shit out of them." He's a racist, homophobic raging sexist, approved of by the Ku Klux Klan. If he were any father to the right, he'd have to lean left to give a handy to Attila the Hun.