The Glade 4.0

Holy sweet Jesus. That was brutal. I'm sure most Trump supporters will still be Trump supporters, but goddamn did he get schooled.

No he didn't. He totally won. He told that ***** off!

Or something. Dude's a clown.

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Holy shitsnacks!

He's out of his league in every possible way except popular opinion, where he's still neck and neck, because Hillary's a horrible candidate, too.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Pretty much as succinct as you can get.

I'm just waiting on him to go full reality show Donald before it's over......And I have to admit, if he were elected it would provide the best comedy material in history. It would "trump" the Dubya years.

Keep in mind that the debate last night was about the significant population that is still trying to make up its mind which candidate is less bad. Most of us already have; the debate was not for us except maybe as an insight into where the race will go from here.

This created an immense problem for Hillary Clinton. She spent a ton of time attacking Trump last night, and to be fair, she did a good job of baiting him. That, however, is not what she needed to do.

Many of you would agree Trump is a clown and a buffoon. The left has tried to paint him as one for 15-18 months now. So has a large portion of the Right; David French is still whining about it on the National Review. So has the mainstream press. No one took Trump seriously until it was far too late to stop him from winning the nomination. People have been jumping up and down screaming about all of Trump's sordid history - and there's a LOT of it - for over a year.

This is not news. It is not news that Trump had bankruptcies; people know that already. Undecideds are past that at this point or they wouldn't be undecided. That undecided voter also knows that it isn't Donald Trump's bankruptcies that had to be bailed out with TARP; its just that those bankruptcies are running against Hillary Clinton.

It is not news that Donald Trump has said mean things about women. The undecided voter is past that. Some of those women (like Rosie O'Donnell) did deserve it. That undecided voter also knows Hillary throws sexism at everything, or a surrogate does it for her. They know Hillary hasn't been so eager to stick up for women when its her husband.

If we're even more honest, we'll admit that undecided voter knows that lots of men say mean things about women, especially fat women. That undecided voter knows women say mean things about fat women. That undecided voter has probably done so as well - and lets not kid ourselves - we've all done it. I definitely call gigantic fatasses what they are. Hillary also knows this, no one really thinks that she's shocked that Trump called someone fat.

We could go on and on with this - the point is that Hillary Clinton is tied with this guy. She is tied with a guy that is allegedly a clown and a buffoon.

That means one of three things:

A) He is not in fact a clown or buffoon
B) She is also a clown and a buffoon
C) She is something just as unsuited to the Presidency as a clown/buffoon

Take your pick, but it has to be one of these things. There's no other explanation.

Continuing to tear down an opponent with attacks everyone's already heard while you, yourself, are at the same vote total isn't going to win over those undecideds. They heard it all; you may stop them from voting, you may send them off to a third party, but in the aggregate total you won't make gains that aren't offset by gains your opponent makes when you insult everyone's intelligence.

If you portray your opponent as a ridiculous buffoon, all you've done is lower expectations for him or her. You are crippling your own efforts. All your opponent has to do is be less of a buffoon than you claim he is.

The fundamental problems Hillary faced last night with her attack strategy were that by attacking Trump as a scumbag businessman who knows nothing, has ridiculous plans, and is a dangerous loose cannon is that she sets a ridiculously low bar for him. All he has to do is be a technically-legit businessman who appears to be learning more about the issues, with at least semi-plausible plans, and at least has some basic human reluctance to end the **** world. If he does that, he's over the bar, and doesn't lose even if she looks better. Everything he does above that is pure candy for him.

If you don't think he cleared that bar last night, you're fooling yourselves. Hillary needs to come up with something better than repeating the same stuff about Trump, telling people to go to her website, and repeating talking points from 1988. "Make the wealthy pay their fair share" is one of the most tired lines in politics and she actually sued it last night. If Hillary had not had Trump to attack last night she'd have had nothing to say. If she were against ANY other Republican she'd be getting annihilated. That's why she is struggling to maintain a lead against a candidate everyone scoffed at, who she should theoretically be beating by over 10 points.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I would pick something like C.

Although I suspect the particular qualities she has that make her offensive for the presidency, would also make her somewhat effective at it. (At least, effective in the sense that the government continues to run business as usual, America doesn't become an international pariah, and the lobby groups continue to bribe the government to expand their power over the american people.)

Trump... I'm torn between him being just utterly ineffective, or actively dangerous.

I despise Hillary, but I honestly believe Trump's a far more dangerous choice. "Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't."

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

There is a fourth alternative:

D) 40% of the voters are themselves clowns and buffoons, or at least incapable of recognizing a clown/buffoon when they see one.

Personally, I think the answer is D.

That is actually not an alternative at all. You notice I specified right off the bat the issue is undecided voters. Clinton should have almost all of those at this point, and does not. This is because she is, in one of the respects I named, just as bad as Trump and those voters cannot make up their mind which is less bad.



This speaks far more to unwarranted arrogance on your part than anything else.

Unless of course, you mean Clinton supporters. They do, after all, include BLM, SJWs of every stripe, feminists, advocates for illegal immigrants, and the 2 music professors 3 doors down from me and their obnoxious children, so maybe that's who you were referring to. They are, after all, quite the basket of deplorables.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This isn't likely to actually happen.

Trump is likely to be a one term president who flails ineffectively and maintains the status quo by accident.

Also, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" is simply a platitude. It's applicable in situations where you have no, or almost no, information on one alternative but we have plenty of information on Trump.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm actually giving Trump the benefit of the doubt on that one. I am making an assumption that he doesn't mean anything he says in an attempt to squeeze votes from racist and sexist assholes, and that he has no real plan to accomplish anything once he gets into office.

If we go by what he actually says, he's far worse than Hillary. I just doubt there's any real conviction behind anything he's ever said (especially as his statements from one minute to the next are in complete conflict.) That leaves him as "the devil we don't know," because his campaign may have no relation to what he does if he gains office.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I am undecided (sort of). I'm not voting for Clinton. I could, possibly, maybe, vote for Trump IF he suddenly appeared educated on the issues, reasonable in his policies, and less touchy. His response related to his taxes and the birther issue (which I never cared about anyway) were so goddamn stupid, especially since he should have known it was coming, that I was astounded. Was there any preparation at all? Is he taking this seriously? Add that in to everything else and it's over for me.

The debate solidified it for me. I'm not voting for Clinton. I'm not voting for Trump. I'm not voting for Johnson.

I don't think he's actually worse than Hillary based on what he says - Hillary is just better at dressing it up in the political terms we're all used to hearing. She doesn't have any more substance than he does in what she says. Her policy positions may have more, but she just refers to "muh website!" and relies on the fact that no one wants to read 90 pages of policy wonk on... much of anything.

The question with Trump is not so much what he'll do as who he'll appoint as advisors and to the USSC. He's not likely to be able to make much headway personally, partly out of the resentment both party's establishments will feel towards him and partly out of inexperience. The best we can hope for from him is that he'll essentially be a caretaker and a real Republican will replace him in 4 years; the worst we can expect is that it will be back to the Democrats - except that Democrat won't be Hillary Clinton.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What about his history, personality or presentation leads you to think he isn't himself a racist and sexist *******?

How do I vote Lester Holt out of office?

That question can best be answered by pointing out that the definitions of racism and sexism you're using are habitually those designed for leftist political benefit, rather than what those words actually mean. Unironically using the word 'racist' or 'sexist' these days is a tacit admission that's not the actual problem, and you don't want to confront the real one. These words are slurs, no different from calling someone a 'nigger'.



Watch FOX. It's all a matter of which lies drive you least crazy to listen to.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Look, every politician that is a 'decision maker' has an army of advisors making policy recommendations to them. While the president may help select the voices they hear in the first place, most of their real decisions are going to be the result of consultation with military, economic, foreign policy, intelligence advisors. With a few exceptions, most the decisions are decisions a reasonable person could arrive at based on the arguments and advice of their staff.

Clinton, whatever her faults are, actually listens to her advisors and at least her decisions will be influenced by those factors.

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that his ego prevents him from staying 'on script' --he wont listen to his advisors, meaning that the decisions of his administration would be those of him alone. A terrifying fact for a man who has show an utter lack of self control.

No, I'm talking straight-up bigotry and misogyny, not micro-aggressions and cultural appropriation nonsense. For his entire public life, Trump has given every indication that he is genuinely bigoted against minorities and genuinely a sexist pig towards women.

But just ask the blacks, and the gays... they'll tell you he has a great relationship with them.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's the electoral college that matters, not so much the close numbers in the nationwide popular vote. (http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... -forecast/ shows both.)

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

I'm well aware of that, and yet her circumstances with voters in swing states are not tremendously different than her overall national polling. Some of these states are more favorable than others, yet she is not beating Trump in anywhere near the numbers that she theoretically ought to. She was falling behind Trump in numerous states before the debate. The debate may well arrest that fall, but the only state-specific polling average change since the debate was in Michigan... and she's falling there. Her electoral-college total is near-tied as well, since if every state went to who has the majority right now, the only state Trump would need to flip is Florida.

This is not because Trump is wonderful; this is because Clinton is really that terrible. She would be getting somewhere between clearly beaten and utterly **** steamrolled right now if the Republicans had nominated ANYONE else. Unless something significant changes she's going to barely eke out an electoral college win against a candidate that should be suffering a Mondale-like defeat against her. Just the fact that Trump is going to have a triple-digit electoral total is an indication of just how much the Democrats have alienated voters that it had for decades. The Republicans at least have the excuse that their own voters finally threw a tantrum and nominated Trump - The Democrats rigged their entire system so the party could keep pretending it had the power to anoint people.



Trump has made widely-acknowleged changes in his overall presentation in the last month. Moreover, his original advisors' strategy was "let Trump be Trump" so his advisors were telling him to essentially do that (and winning the primaries in the process) He has shown all indications of listening to his newest advisory team, and according to the latest reports will be taking their advice to practice before the next debate. These are simply the facts. Trump is not an exemplar of taking advice by any means, but the idea that it's "terrifying" and "his ego" is oversimplified self-back-patting.

The guy won the Republican nomination not listening to advisors and there are indications that for Republicans at least the political advisors are a bunch of charlatans and outright con men with no actual interest in winning. Ask Jeb Bush how well listening to advisors worked out for him.

Furthermore, it is literally impossible to run the Presidency without "listening to advisors". There is simply too much to do. The advisors, especially the cabinet secretaries and their subordinates actually control a great deal; the President simply cannot intervene in most decisions without dropping dead of exhaustion. The vast majority of what any President's administration does is heard of peripherally or not at all by the President himself. It's physically impossible for Trump to "make all the decisions himself".



Lol, no he hasn't. You're using the definitions I'm talking about, but please, tell me more about how the "sexist pig towards women" is the first major candidate to ever have a female campaign manager, and the first campaign manager of three that's managed to have a significant effect on his behavior. Yes, he beats up on wealthy powerful women like Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Kelly. Rather unlike Hillary Clinton who is all about women's issues unless they pertain to her husband and then it's all "bimbo patrol" or whatever. "Every woman deserves to be believed" unless of course it's Juanita Broaddrick, amirite? (I don't know that I necessarily believe Broaddrick myself - the issue is the special pleading, not whether Broaddrick or any of the other of Bill's "bimbos" is telling the truth.)

As for "racist" that means pretty much zero coming from anyone on the left these days. You like throwing these terms out there, asking me for explanations, and then can't be assed to come back with a reasoned argument, so as far as I'm concerned the term racism coming from you is just a slur. You're part of the crowd that loves having a white male boogeyman to simultaneously pretend to be scared of, laugh at, and pretend that his anger over losing his coal mining job is "racism" so that word is pretty much an automatic sacrifice of credibility coming from you or anyone else on the left.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is a very good point. And what's more, when he gets unscripted, it's generally not good. This tells me the judgement is not good, except when controlled, and yet he's frequently uncontrollable.

The conspiracy theorist in me says that the campaign's strategy was to sandbag the first debate, so when he prepares for the second and it shows, it can drive a narrative of "I know I don't have prior political experience, but I'm a fast learner. See how much I improved in just one month? Hillary's claims that her experience makes her the better choice don't hold weight -- I'm already catching up to her thirty-year plateau."

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Zapp Brannigan Reads Donald Trump Quotes

Can't embed Twitter videos, but the link is well worth the click.

Now that you mention it, that's an interesting possibility.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, I always feel bad about not responding to your responses. It's a combination of two things: (1) lack of time and (2) the realization (which, for some reason, surprises me every time, even after all these years) that we perceive the world in such fundamentally different ways on issues of racism and sexism that I don't really know how to respond. Trump is a perfect example of that - he's so clearly, obviously, proudly racist and sexist in my view, and I know you're already aware of the same actions, statements and patterns of behavior that I believe demonstrate it, so if you don't see those acts/statements/behaviors as racist and sexist, I don't know what else to say. It really seems like you have such a chip on your shoulder about these things that literally nothing short of a KKK rally would strike you as racist and I'm not even sure what would strike you as sexist.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying that you, DE, are racist and sexist. I'm saying that you seem to have so much resentment around these issues that you seem willfully blind to those things in others, and that leaves me at a loss on how to engage you about them.