hbiden@onlyfans.com wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:10 pm i started to make a list of all the reasons why trump won (twitter, birtherism, russia), but cohen answers it himself halfway through. it was all the free media attention.

I'm sure even in 2024 it has absolutely nothing to do with appealing to America's ugliest sentiments. I can understand how it's an exhausting topic for a lot of people but it never surprises me how liberal voters, mostly, always seem to intellectualize racism and bigotry.

I think Trump won because The Apprentice put him back into the public spotlight. Otherwise, he'd still be hawking grey steaks on infomercials. That show (and other reality TV) was a doomsday device.

I read something a couple of years ago that said basically trump won in 2016 because the democrats kinda slept on social media, whereas the right pour lots of money into troll farms and bots and bombard people with lies and misinformation that plays on their fears. See also: brexit/bannon/cambridge analytica.

Curry Pervert wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 4:36 pm I read something a couple of years ago that said basically trump won in 2016 because the democrats kinda slept on social media, whereas the right pour lots of money into troll farms and bots and bombard people with lies and misinformation that plays on their fears. See also: brexit/bannon/cambridge analytica.

Which is not great news considering what that fuck Musk has done with Twitter, and with Zuckfuck still in charge of Meta.

i think the media learned their lesson the hard way. they won't give trump free publicity anymore, but they still want to cash in on his name. so every time he coughs in court, it's front page news.
twitter did ban him for a while. i'm not sure how that's going now.
congress scared zuck so bad. i don't see any political ads/news on facebook anymore.

penningtron wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 8:48 am

eephus wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:02 am Trump has star power.

Maybe. Current Trump is not what he was in 2016 with a commanding voice, admittedly a lot of energy for a piece of shit, and slogans that resonate with morons. Now he weakly rambles on about grievances people are tired of hearing about and looks like burnt bacon. He doesn't even pretend to have an economic message at this point, nothing about bringing back jobs this time. Sure, he's clobbering a bunch of soulless weirdos and trolls in the primaries but that's not saying much.

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I think he will lose, as he did last time. But running on nothing but grievance and doing as well as he is--it's quite an achievement.

Frankie99 wrote: Gonna disagree, which is why I said she's just as dangerous in different ways.

As bad as she is, she is not even close.

Trump overtly incites his followers to violence to subvert democracy. He actually did it, and he still does it. He would welcome civil war, domestic terror, urban destruction as long as it solidifies his position.

There's no one else who is viable who's even remotely that bad.

Policy, law, confirming judges--that's part of the game. He's not interested in staying inside the lines, at all, especially now.

I gotta ask...why wouldn't Trump be a complete buffoon? He's no less demented and likely learned fuck all during his first term. He will continue to surround himself with effete assholes, fellow nuts, and flim-flam men. He's inveterately stubborn as a team of pack mules.

No one runs for president on their own, and no one serves on his own (still "his").

As fucked as it was, Trump's White House kind of ran in a sorta-halfway-normal fashion the first time around.

By the end, he had Christopher Miller and Kash Patel running the defense department. So he would have a shot at effecting a *coup*.

That's where he will *start* if he gets back in.

As far as the coverage etc., Trump won because hardly anyone took what he said seriously.

That goes for almost everyone.

No one has any excuse now, though, and the national media certainly is shitting the bed like they've never done it before.

The basics of what he says and has said, it's a means to an end mostly, but he believes the worst parts of it. The racism and misogyny and ableism...it minimizes the depth of his pin-eyed hatred and self-centeredness to even use those words to try to describe it.

He's genuinely a fascist, insofar as fascism would benefit him personally, which it surely would if he gets to usher it forth. I'd rather have anyone else in play make it in.

Frankie99 wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:44 pm

eephus wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:02 am

Frankie99 wrote: Fri Jan 05, 2024 9:19 am Also, Haley is probably just as dangerous as Trump, in different ways.

No. She is not.

Thinking Trump will be as bumbling and incompetent in office the 2nd time around is a mistake.

They had their dress rehearsal.

Running for president is extraordinarily difficult for the candidate. Almost no one has the skill and ability to dissemble necessary to truly front a campaign. Reagan, Clinton, and Obama are the only great presidential candidates of the last fifty years.

The campaign, in the absence of someone with real star power, is what wins it--props up the candidate as best they can and instills enough excitement, fear, and rage in their constituencies to get them to vote.

Trump has star power. Also the morals of an alligator. All that combined with his complete ruthlessness makes him as skilled a demagogue as has ever run for the office. But the Biden campaign in the last general was extremely well-run, and they beat him. So whatever. I don't care how old he is or about anything else really. He's not Trump, and he's going to be the alternative.

If Haley gets the nomination, I'll be marginally relieved. I'll definitely be less worried about her sure-to-be-terrible presidency than if Trump got back in there.

Gonna disagree, which is why I said she's just as dangerous in different ways. She can put through actual legislation with the help of a sympathetic congress (should that be the case). Her people will know how to get things through the works in ways that Trump's peeps clearly do not. His people are ham fisted and foolish. They will remain ham fisted and foolish, but might have learned from their previous mistakes.

I think it's short sighted to give her more leash simply because....well, I don't know why. But she's def. a better legislator and has more brains than he does. it is not that I think he's *less dangerous* because of his first term per se, and I'm not counting on Trump being a complete buffoon a second time, but I'm not going to look past her ability to carry out the same policies, just with a little more polish while doing it.

IOW, he'll hold a press conference saying all the terrible shit he will do before doing it, cause a ruckus, get people riled up, etc. She will pursue the same objectives he would have, and has a better grasp on what it takes to get that done.

IOOW, I don't trust her any more than I do anyone of the fuckos trying to get elected under the guise of conservatism, including Trump. They're lying at all times.

I agree both are varying levels of terrifying, but I am not willing to say that one will be a relief over the other. Either one, we're pretty fucked, but we'll be fucked differently.

I get what you're saying, but Nikki Haley's tenure in South Carolina should dissuade you a little from thinking that she has the knowledge and skill for deft political maneuvering, or even that she has the ability to surround herself with the right people to govern in the way you describe. She ran out of steam and quit before the ride was over and then was thrown a table-scrap of a job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She's kind of a dud Romney-type that the current Republican Party has little use for. She’s got dark money from the “anyone-but-Trump” bet-hedging super-rich and is centrist bait electorally for sure, but she has no pull within the party’s dominant faction. I could see her getting Kevin McCarthy-like pushback the first time she tries to balk at or water down an extreme policy proposition. She still kind of believes in the function of government which means she's slightly boxed in by its gentleman’s-agreement-style rules and traditions. That don’t fly with the MAGAts. If we are talking about Haley and the people she would bring into to the administration vs. Trump and the people he would bring, I think she would be, marginally (oh so slightly), a bit of sand versus Trump’s 3-in-1 lubricating oil to the gears of total destruction. Remember, Trump already has people like the Heritage Foundation (and jebus knows who else is lurking in the grass) planning for maximum effect on day one with things like Project 2025.

Anthony Flack wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 2:29 pm

hbiden@onlyfans.com wrote: Sat Jan 06, 2024 8:42 pm because women voters are women first and democrat second.

Because misogynists will still vote for a woman before they vote for a Democrat, and a female candidate will draw in some foolish progressive votes regardless. The only thing stopping Nikki Haley from slam-dunking the election is the Republican primaries.

Can confirm. Every woman in my immediate and extended family, whether liberal or conservative, is seriously considering Haley right now.

Just to be clear, he may be a fascist kleptocrat, but he will still be a fucking buffoon. I wpild rather get hit by a meteorite than see that asshole back in the White House. It's painfully clear that he's running to keep himself out of jail. Hopefully, actual patriots will see that the bars slam closed on him first.

Also, fuck white collar prison. Gen-pop in the penitentiary.

lol, the EU has now prescribed USB-C as a standard for smartphones and tablets and I'm looking at a bunch of folks calling it monopolistic tyranny. Every political group has some dumb hobby horse like this, but it really baffles me how libertarians very well have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to advance in areas like corporate overreach or consumer protection but instead spend so much of their effort on superficial nonsense like this.

Yeah man it's so oppressive being able to reliably use a wall outlet wherever I go. Having to carry around 50 different charging cables and adapters is freedom, obviously.