I think he won, and he won bigly.
But seriously ... in a media driven society hyped up like a kindergartner on 50mg of Vyvanse, when you drop lines about putting your 'devil' opponent into jail and those are the soundbites/tweets/headlines dominating the news cycle today and not the 'grab em' by the pussy' insanity, it's hard to understate just how massive of a victory that is for the Trump campaign. Add it to the list of past 'atrocities' that Hillary likes to tick off as a reminder of why people shouldn't vote for Trump.
Trump's argument is ... I am who I am, and whatever you think of me suck it up because SHE is worse. That is what this has degenerated into. Screw the issues. And when you are playing to the cult of personality, Donald has done better. There's no disputing that. The type of people who were offended by Trump's comment were never going to vote for him anyway.
For the record, I think that the GOP abandoning him actually works in Trump's favor. Broad swaths of the electorate find politicians (such as Paul Ryan) to be spineless sacks of opportunistic scum and Trump differentiating himself from the party actually, believe it or not, builds his populist credibility.
All that said, the only way Hillary loses this election now is if a particularly scandalous e-mail or other personal revelation is leaked. In other words, highly unlikely.
Last edited by Hawk; 10-10-2016 at 06:11 PM.
This isn't directed at you, but I'm beyond tired of (R)'s excusing DJT by saying "Hilary's bad too". It doesn't justify his corroded values and it enables future clowns to take up Trump's mantle in future elections.
We need to start analyzing these candidates independently of each other.
wow, it was Kellyanne Conway's husband that found and directed Linda Tripp
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
You're a smart guy, but I think you might be confusing support with salience of supporters. I don't doubt that Trump's ardent supporters are even more committed this morning than they were the day before, but I don't think he changed a single mind last night and he needs to start changing minds if he is going to win the election.
I agree with you at a level that the establishment abandoning him won't hurt him as much as many think, but the current situation outlines the Republican challenge this year from the get-go: how to channel white working class anger while not alienating the segment of the Republican base that has been screwing the white working class.
That's subjective. I won't wade too deeply into the concept of social desirability bias here, but in an election as polarizing as this one has become I'd treat most empirical data being produced with an absolute sliver of authenticity.
I draw parallels from British politics way too much, but take a close look at the phenomena surrounding the volatility of the Brexit vote. You had the entire media, a recently elected majority party/Prime Minister, and academic consensus ramming the notion of Brexit as a catastrophic event down the throats of voters in the UK. Who supported it? A racist nationalist party, a lampooned Mayor of London, and a hodgepodge of bizarre and obscure members of Parliament. What happened on election day? Well, history.
The modern electorate is more fickle and more unpredictable than ever before, especially when it comes to being instructed by the 'elite' class on what is good or bad for them.
Maybe the mantra "I knew it was bad, but I did it anyways" is being incorporated into 21st century voting behavior theory. Maybe it's a rejection of establishment leaders AND principles.
I don't know, but far stranger things have happened and I don't think any of us have the foggiest clue what election day is going to look like in this country.
Last edited by Hawk; 10-10-2016 at 08:18 PM.
Last year Buffett paid $1 million in taxes. This was literally 1/70,000th of his net wealth and he still refuses to release his tax returns.
Think about that, he could pay that amount of taxes for 70,000 years and still have money left over.
He uses his corporation as a tax shelter and savings account he can use the resources of and dip in whenever he needs cash but he's got the balls to pretend like he's got the moral high grounds on the tax argument.
Hawk (10-10-2016)
Oh, this thing isn't in the bag for Hillary and my comments shouldn't be taken that way. One of the reasons Hillary is not letting up anywhere is that her own campaign is conjecturing that Trump will do better than what the polls are indicating due to the difficulty in judging how many new voters he will bring into the system. In 1980, when I was in the midst of my hackery years, so many Dems thought "people will never pull the lever for that war-mongering nut ball Reagan," but they did. So Trump winning wouldn't be unprecedented in my lifetime (although Reagan was comfortably ahead at this stage of the campaign against Carter). It may be a lot like Ventura's win here in Minnesota, although that was a three-way race. Election day turnout was really big for Ventura.
Thanks for clearing that up for us...
bravesnumberone (10-10-2016), weso1 (10-10-2016)
Did they fact check whether or not Hillary really is the devil? I'd go with mostly true on that one.
thank you weso1!
Based on what? And if Hillary is a horrible human being, what does that make Trump?
I give Hillary kudos for the way she has handled Trump. She has proven that a deranged despot wannabe is no match for her, even with a largely ignorant populace that doesn't particularly like her. She could've gone ballistic on Trump several times and would've been well within reason to do so, but she kept her cool and her eye on the big picture.
Though it must be stated that she is nowhere near the campaigner of Obama or her husband.
Last edited by Runnin; 10-10-2016 at 09:29 PM.