Let's pretend, optimistically, that political campaigns were sometimes about innovative, creative, edgy solutions to 21st century catastrophes. Let's imagine a place where the two major parties in the US nominated candidates who could articulate solutions to global, national, and local inequity. Global Warming. Harambe shootings. Poverty. Homelessness. Veterans with mental health illnesses. The rap music. Etc.
Since I can't even finish a paragraph about serious issues without my head starting to hurt about what Trump actually talks about, I'm going to write a short series of counter ideas to things he talks about:
Idea 1:
Trump says that Hillary Clinton's security should have their guns taken away. He also says that gun rights advocates could/should deal with Hillary Clinton. So, ok: let's put those two ideas into practice. In return, Trump has to jump into alligator infested waters near any of this properties in Florida. This seems like a fair quid pro quo to me.
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/16/494328717/trumps-second-amendment-rhetoric-again-veers-into-threatening-territory
Idea 2:
While running against HRC, a woman who has lived her entire life in heavily scrutinized public services, Trump has psudeo-doctors reveal his medical information on a psuedo-doctor reality TV show (Dr. Oz). He tells us repeatedly that HRC is sick, and demands to see her health records. At the same time, he refuses to oblige poltical convention and release his tax returns because, as his son says "Why would we do that? Then people would just ask questions about it?". Yes they would Donald Jr., yes they would.
So, instead of releasing his tax returns, Donald has to match every dollar spent by his campaign, by the RNC, and by the Super Political Action Committees supporting him to the charity of the internet's choice (once again, I assume this will end in a giant Harambe memorial). But maybe it finds a Zika vaccine, or infrastructure in impoverished nations. Or deals with the sickening poverty found all over the USA. Who knows.
More ideas some other time.
We're Doomed: (C) Stands for Cookie?
Hot Take: Hillary Clinton is not good with technology. From this story: http://gizmodo.com/hillary-clinton-had-11-blackberrys-while-secretary-of-s-1786108731
- HRC used 11 Blackberry phones at once. I mean....why? 11 Blackberries? By the seventh, doesn't one start to wonder "hey, maybe this isn't working out?"
- HRC was only vaguely aware that there was a computer server installed at her house. The person who installed it didn;t think it was for her. But he built it...in her house...for not her...oh god the stupidity here is killing me.
- And last, but most certainly not least:
HRC was the Secretary of State in the USA for Obama's first four years. I hope, early on in the job, that someone reviewed how information that was somewhere in the classified to top secret to kill-you-if-you-find-out spectrum was labelled.
But, apparently Hillary skipped alphabet day as there were 81 email chains that were marked classified on her unclassified personal server. This is a problem because, you know, state secrets starting wars and whatnot.
Then, being Hillary Clinton, she lied about it. Because of course she did. Or, even while months and months and months into this investigation, she claims to not have learned that emails marked "C" were classified. Either way, she found a new method of playing into the Republican and Trump construct that she can't be trusted.
In tennis, you call these unforced errors. In politics, I'd call them dealbreakers. With this many weeks to go in the campaign, there are millions and millions of voters being contacted by volunteers for Hillary every day, at the doors and on the phone. When they call someone, say the not-college-educated white voters who are overwhelmingly indicating support for Trump, that says "well, I'd vote for Hillary, but I have three jobs just to afford raising my family, I'm still struggling, voting for Clinton, Obama, Bush and whoever didn't work in the past, Hillary lied about her health, lied about her email and I know Trump is the antichrist...but at least he doesn't have a filter and nothing else has worked so far..." The volunteer will not be able to come up with a response.
Calmly though, the race is still about the big states (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado,,maybe Michigan and Virginia). If enough non white voters turn out to vote, then none of this matters. If they stay home, HRC has a problem. She probably won't.
We're Doomed: I don't want to be doomed anymore (warning: strong language)
Ok! Although Florida will still do something dramatically stupid (no doubt), we now have to turn our attention back to how doomed we are.
Most people, by and large, don't spend a lot of attention on politics. There's been some research that it's around 4-10 minutes a week. Here's how this contributes to our current re-doomening.
THE DONALD, he who gets non stop attention from political pundits and TV news, while spending almost no money on advertising, has been pretty consistently doing the following:
1) Calling HRC "Crooked Hillary"
2) Saying that HRC lies
3) Saying that HRC is very ill, and hiding it
4) Praising the leadership of Vladmir Putin
5) Saying racist, mysognistic, homophobic, hateful, mean spirited, evil things
6) Turning over campaign leadership non stop.
He was so repetitive with points 1 to 3 that a lot of people sort of tuned it out. It is very similar to how he led the birther movement (the group that claims Obama is not American), or the group that says Obama is a secret Muslim. People I used to speak to door to door had heard those conspiracy theories so often that they kind of tuned them out after a while. There was no proof to back them up, there was a lot of proof to the contrary, so about 60-70% of the states just forgot about. The remainder get pretty brainwashed by media or local conservative leaders, and would agree that the sky was pink and Regan is still alive in Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity (American media moguls) told them.
Where this becomes a problem that could undo HRC is...SHE WAS MOTHERFUCKING UNBELIEVABLY FOR FUCK SAKE SICK AND SHE MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN FOR FUCK SAKE DIDN'T TELL ANYONE.
(For the facts, here's a BBC story. We can all trust the BBC, right? http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37346293)
What happens next is going to be awful. For people who are busy leading their lives, and only spend a little bit of attention on this, they're likely to think "huh, Hillary is lying to us? Wow. Maybe Donald has a point. He can't be that bad, can he?". I feel comfortable guaranteeing that as Field Organizers and volunteers go door to door in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and other battleground states, they'll have completely reasonable people telling them "well, I was going to vote for Hillary, but now it turns out that Trump was right so I don't know what I'mm going to do. Maybe just stay home or vote Libertarian."
The moment a politician plays into the construct that their opponent has built for them, they can spend the rest of the election fighting their way out, and still lose, regardless of facts. John Kerry lost an election to George Bush because he was painted as a lying flip flopper, and it didn't matter if he actually was or not becuase Bush painted him into the corner.
Hillary may have just painted herself into the corner of being not trustworthy and not healthy. This may have been enough of a mistake to throw the stupid fucking election to Trump. Unbelievable, but true. She was already wildly unpopular, with polls showing that she was personally disliked almost as much as Trump.
And this doesn't even touch my next post, about how it turns out that she SENT CONFIDENTIAL EMAILS FROM PERSONAL ACCOUNTS, THAT WERE LABELLED (C). So yeah, there aren't storm clouds on the horizon. This is essentially a horror movie, and we're at the moment where the young woman has run into the forest to escape the killer, and it looks like she's about to get free.
Also, I hope Hillary recovers from her pneumonia soon, and the fact that she hid it from her staff doesn't imply it's something worse than pneumonia. And don't get me wrong, she was under no ethical imperative to keep us up to date on illnesses that are easy to treat, but it played exactly into the story that Trump built for her, which is such a batshitfuckinginsancecrazyasstupid thing to do.
Most people, by and large, don't spend a lot of attention on politics. There's been some research that it's around 4-10 minutes a week. Here's how this contributes to our current re-doomening.
THE DONALD, he who gets non stop attention from political pundits and TV news, while spending almost no money on advertising, has been pretty consistently doing the following:
1) Calling HRC "Crooked Hillary"
2) Saying that HRC lies
3) Saying that HRC is very ill, and hiding it
4) Praising the leadership of Vladmir Putin
5) Saying racist, mysognistic, homophobic, hateful, mean spirited, evil things
6) Turning over campaign leadership non stop.
He was so repetitive with points 1 to 3 that a lot of people sort of tuned it out. It is very similar to how he led the birther movement (the group that claims Obama is not American), or the group that says Obama is a secret Muslim. People I used to speak to door to door had heard those conspiracy theories so often that they kind of tuned them out after a while. There was no proof to back them up, there was a lot of proof to the contrary, so about 60-70% of the states just forgot about. The remainder get pretty brainwashed by media or local conservative leaders, and would agree that the sky was pink and Regan is still alive in Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity (American media moguls) told them.
Where this becomes a problem that could undo HRC is...SHE WAS MOTHERFUCKING UNBELIEVABLY FOR FUCK SAKE SICK AND SHE MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN FOR FUCK SAKE DIDN'T TELL ANYONE.
(For the facts, here's a BBC story. We can all trust the BBC, right? http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37346293)
What happens next is going to be awful. For people who are busy leading their lives, and only spend a little bit of attention on this, they're likely to think "huh, Hillary is lying to us? Wow. Maybe Donald has a point. He can't be that bad, can he?". I feel comfortable guaranteeing that as Field Organizers and volunteers go door to door in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and other battleground states, they'll have completely reasonable people telling them "well, I was going to vote for Hillary, but now it turns out that Trump was right so I don't know what I'mm going to do. Maybe just stay home or vote Libertarian."
The moment a politician plays into the construct that their opponent has built for them, they can spend the rest of the election fighting their way out, and still lose, regardless of facts. John Kerry lost an election to George Bush because he was painted as a lying flip flopper, and it didn't matter if he actually was or not becuase Bush painted him into the corner.
Hillary may have just painted herself into the corner of being not trustworthy and not healthy. This may have been enough of a mistake to throw the stupid fucking election to Trump. Unbelievable, but true. She was already wildly unpopular, with polls showing that she was personally disliked almost as much as Trump.
And this doesn't even touch my next post, about how it turns out that she SENT CONFIDENTIAL EMAILS FROM PERSONAL ACCOUNTS, THAT WERE LABELLED (C). So yeah, there aren't storm clouds on the horizon. This is essentially a horror movie, and we're at the moment where the young woman has run into the forest to escape the killer, and it looks like she's about to get free.
Also, I hope Hillary recovers from her pneumonia soon, and the fact that she hid it from her staff doesn't imply it's something worse than pneumonia. And don't get me wrong, she was under no ethical imperative to keep us up to date on illnesses that are easy to treat, but it played exactly into the story that Trump built for her, which is such a batshitfuckinginsancecrazyasstupid thing to do.
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