We are heading towards an Idiocracy!

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Only if by 'crush' you mean roughly a 3% lead and a dropping favorability rating as time goes on.

Clinton vs Trump is looking like it might actually be a close race.

Bernie, does, however, crush Trump, but with the democratic party doing everything it can to shore up Hillary and Bernie's issues with black voters up to now, Trump losing isn't really something you can be comfortable with yet.

I hate everything about all of this and want to get off the ride now.

[Overcast]

[Tev]

According to a HuffPo reporter, the DNC is sitting on a mountain of anti-Trump data that it's going to have a field day with come general election time. If anything, the DNC is appalled that the RNC and the other campaigns are being so crappy about digging up Trump dirt to use against him.

"Not taking Trump seriously as a candidate a year ago was a mistake we all made, so I don't blame his Republican opponents for that. But the lack of evidence that they have been doing thorough research on Trump more recently is malpractice," said Daly. "[I]f a Republican had committed six recent college grads to power through a Nexis dump in November and December, by January they'd have been able to compile a powerful narrative amplified by names and quotes that they could have put in ads by now."

...

But it is treated as a truism among Republicans that a vast reservoir of damaging opposition research remains untouched. It's a suspicion that Democrats aren't challenging. Indeed, one Democratic opposition research said that they’ve spent the past eight months compiling material on Trump as he’s risen up the ranks. That's actually not a lot of time. Democrats had started focusing on Mitt Romney in 2009 -- a full two years before he ran again for the presidency. But those eight months have produced some good.

That researcher estimated that of all the material they’ve compiled -- court and property records, newspaper clips and videos -- approximately 80 percent of it has yet to surface in this election cycle.

[Krylo]

If saying "Mexicans are Rapists" isn't enough to stop him, I highly doubt that anything the DNC claims to have on him is going to murder his popularity with his base or with right leaning moderates, particularly when placed against such a strong establishment 'hero' as Ms. Clinton--the very thesis of everything this election cycle is showing the electorate wants to get rid of.

I.E. Being bought and sold, with strong ties to wall street, who has an abyssmal voting record, and who, without doing or saying anything else, has absolutely no friends amongst anyone who leans right even a little bit thanks to 15 years of character assassination by the far right.

Would I like to think that if Hillary wins the nomination that she'll soundly, well, trump Trump?

Sure. It'd be better than President Trump. I mean, sort of. A little bit*.

However, there's just no way to be sure of that the way things are panning out.

Also: On it only being sort of better: she's consistently voted for big businesses, has supported the TPP up until she had to change her story for the presidential race, and takes vacation with Henry "Cause a Genocide for Giggles" Kissinger, and considers him a strong and positive influence on her foreign policy.

I mean, she's basically a Republican, just not as terrible of one as Trump (but then Trump would probably be cock blocked by other Republicans just as much as he would by Democrats, so 4 years of Trump would likely be 4 years of getting nothing done but it'd be super embarrassing.)

[Overcast]

She also stood against gay marriage for a long while and actively refuses to admit that used to be her stance. Actively lying about her past in the process when there are easily attainable videos of her speaking about it.

[Bard The 5th LW]

It doesn't really matter how much dirt anyone has on Trump - he has the support of essentially the majority of Republicans and if they cared about the shit he has said or done then they'd have stopped voting for him by now.

This election isn't really about data or logical analysis anymore. Its pure, blind pathos.

[Solid Snake]

The parallels between our political climate in 2016 and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's are, to be frank, so incredible that I no longer hear "Godwin's Law!" when I invoke them.

The United States of America is going down a dark path. We should migrate the hell out while we still can.

[Overcast]

*shrugs* I'm not going anywhere. Even if Trump gets his ass in office. His bluster will end up working about as well as Obama's hope to instigate cross partisan interaction. He'll realize that being President doesn't make him Emperor and he is just one fairly important part of a huge machine.

Sanders would have to deal with that too, but I just enjoy the look of what his desires at half measure would be by comparison.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Overcast

*shrugs* I'm not going anywhere. Even if Trump gets his ass in office. His bluster will end up working about as well as Obama's hope to instigate cross partisan interaction. He'll realize that being President doesn't make him Emperor and he is just one fairly important part of a huge machine.

Sanders would have to deal with that too, but I just enjoy the look of what his desires at half measure would be by comparison.

So, after Hitler lost a presidential election to Hindenburg (because a majority of Germans were not supporters of the Nazi Party; he got like 35% of the vote, a percentage freakishly similar to Trump's base here in the U.S.), Hindenburg had difficulty accomplishing anything without a majority coalition in parliament.

The solution, as advised by Alfread Hugenberg and Franz von Papen, was to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. The idea was that the gesture would bring the Nazi Party to the table in a coalition with the German National People's Party and aside from unifying the parties Hitler was supposed to have little in the way of power or authority.

...Charismatic authoritarians aren't stopped by such half-measures.
Making Donald Trump President is just the first step down a very, very slippery slope, and Donald hasn't been the slightest bit shy about articulating a desire to utilize anything -- including physical force -- to stop anyone who'd so much as criticize him. Donald Trump is not a Constitutional scholar. He views the Presidency as something very akin to a CEO position. In several years, who knows what Trump would be capable of? Let's not forget that when Hitler first rose to prominence, just about every rational and sane German thought that a combination of separation of powers and other politicians from other coalitions would easily swat him down and keep him passive.

Trump himself may not be our nation's Hitler, but if nothing else, his appeal to authoritarians -- and the likelihood that an unabashed authoritarian will actually win a national presidential election, something unheard of in previous American elections -- establishes an ugly precedent. I think enough people dislike Trump that he may well be stopped. But some Republican politician with similar authoritarian leanings, similar charisma and a complete blank slate of a record can use Trump's success as a bellweather. Trump may not succeed, but he's creating the unsettling conditions that will enable someone awful to follow in his footsteps.

EDIT: Watching this debate proves my point. Stating facts against Trump doesn't even matter. Trump is literally somehow persuasive enough to get people on his side while sprouting abject lies and falsehoods. I don't understand how this bizarro world has come to fruition, I don't understand Trump's appeal, but it's real and it's growing and Trump is somehow slowly, gradually winning over Republicans who once stood against him.

EDIT 2: "Mexico will pay for the wall! Don't mind me giving you absolutely no factual details as to how I will force Mexico to pay for it. I will just repeatedly say that Mexico will pay for it and reap all the applause!"
Oh my God. Shoot me now.

EDIT 3: A couple times now, the moderators have actually bailed Donald out by forcing the candidates to move on and address other questions just when Rubio or Cruz had him on the ropes.
I'm actually almost feeling bad for Rubio and Cruz! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME, DONALD TRUMP

[Overcast]

Even if he sees it as a CEO position in the world of business that is even more tenuous than a presidency. The Board of Directors can wave a rather intimidating hand over them, that is why you are able to hear about CEO's being fired from time to time.

Don't get me wrong Trump is nothing good, nor is anything he stands for. But he is a wakeup call for the party he is running for and potentially for the nation at large. He is the living embodiment of what the Republican party has allowed to grow in their base since the anti-establishment precedents of Reagan. He is showing them with every victory how intense the internal civil war of their party has grown and what that means for them, I doubt it will break them, but it may force some long term rethinking of how they are doing things.

For this applaud his presence.