US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6251

On November 17 2016 06:53 Stratos_speAr wrote:


We're in an age where the president is directly quoted and basically everything he says is video recorded and can be found on YouTube.

But go ahead, keep blaming "media bias" for how stupid he sounds.

On November 17 2016 06:56 xDaunt wrote:

You need look no further than the current reporting on the transition to see the bias. It's not even debatable that the media has been rabidly anti-Trump.

On November 17 2016 05:52 kwizach wrote:

Your call for nuanced analysis is appreciated. I don't think anyone here is denying that Clinton and her campaign made important strategic mistakes, yet various other factors which definitely played a role in her defeat are waved away by some people with clear anti-Clinton bias as mere excuses, when any impartial observer would recognize their significance. The role played by various media outlets in how they covered both the campaign as a whole (see for example my previous posts on the false equivalences which characterized a substantial part of the coverage, on the focus on the state of the race itself rather than on policy issues, on the focus sometimes on perception rather than on facts (the WaPo's Chris Cillizza being the poster boy for this), etc.) and HRC's e-mail "scandal" in particular, by Sanders' constant attacks for months on HRC's personal integrity and on the DNC, by the long history of GOP false smears against HRC, by the sexist lenses many still have on, by Wikileaks' releasing documents impacting only HRC and the Democrats, by echo chambers on social media, by James Comey' two breaches of protocol, by how many in the conservative media have so vilified the so-called "mainstream media" over the last couple of decades that reporting is much more rapidly dismissed as soon as it contradicts pre-existing views (about Trump's honesty, for example), etc. -- the list goes on.

The argument that those only played a tangential role because the main issue was how deeply flawed HRC is personally completely misses the point: many people's views of HRC as deeply and fundamentally flawed is precisely shaped by several of the factors mentioned above, and this is particularly true of the fact that many see her as dishonest. Both the quantitative and qualitative data that we have show us that she isn't more or less dishonest than any regular Democratic politician (the witch hunts of the early 1990s did lead her to become more secretive and distrustful of the media, though) -- which is not to say that she never lies, but that's not the same thing as being uniquely and profoundly more dishonest than everyone else --, and her record clearly shows her drive in fighting for a variety of issues that directly resonate with a large part of the electorate. Yet over the last two years, several of the factors I mentioned above contributed to the nose-dive of her honest/dishonest ratings. Obviously, this is not to say either that she did not have weaknesses or that no criticism of her is legitimate. Nevertheless, an honest assessment of her defeat should unquestionably leave a huge space to many of the factors I highlighted.

On November 17 2016 06:59 arbiter_md wrote:
I'm afraid Trump will win 2020 even with disastrous presidency that he will have. Just remember Bush on second term and you can see a case.

On November 17 2016 07:02 Nebuchad wrote:


Bush would have lost second term without 9/11 and the war.

On November 17 2016 07:05 Stratos_speAr wrote:


Of course the media is anti-Trump. This rose-tinted delusion that the media used to be less biased in the past is ridiculous. The media always has a bias.

That said, their bias is completely irrelevant to Trump having a Twitter account. Using his Twitter account doesn't allow him to address the public in an "unfiltered manner" by circumventing the press because everything he says and does is readily available by video.

And it's also funny for you to try to insinuate that the press was helping Clinton when all of her scandals got much, much, much, much, much more media attention than any of his.

On November 17 2016 06:40 Gorsameth wrote:

Mandatory voting get more people to vote who do not care about the process, the candidates or the outcome.
It's how you get more Trump, not less.

You want to make it easier for those who actually want to vote to be able to do so.

Also HAHA at the idea that the Democrats, while not in control of any arm of government could force through a change that would make it more likely for them to win elections.
Do you think the Republicans, who have been vindicated of 6 years of pure obstructionism, will work with anyone else, right now?

On November 17 2016 07:02 Nebuchad wrote:


Bush would have lost second term without 9/11 and the war.

gh -> the reason the current inthread debate here over blame came up was because some people were using wording which tended to disregard the other reasons or consider them to in some sense "not count." most people indeed will, if pressed, properly acknowledge them; but sometimes the more partisan people won't, or they'll talk inaccurately, and only be accurate when pressed. which can lead to spreading false narratives; but this is getting too meta I think.
basically, it came up cuz it kinda was an issue.

On November 17 2016 04:45 oBlade wrote:
Among Corker, Cruz, and Sessions, it can't a good idea to take but so many people out of the senate.

On November 17 2016 07:49 Acrofales wrote:

Are there special elections for those seats? Or what happens?

On November 17 2016 07:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


It reminds me of someone blaming their passenger for ordering a coffee that took too long to make after they hit a car because they ran a red light. We could do the forensics and find out that had she ordered a plain coffee that they would have made it to the light before it turned red and not crashed, but you know, the passenger isn't the one who ran the red light.

So if someone says: "The passenger had nothing to do with the wreck", technically they may be wrong, but most reasonable people can see that had the driver just not ran the red light, the passenger doesn't matter.

Hillary supporters (who's livelihood is still connected to them) are basically at the point of calculating the weight of the passenger and it's impact on acceleration, saying "we can't ignore these other factors!". Sure, from a technical perspective they did, but that's missing the forest for the sake of seeing the tree.

On November 17 2016 08:09 zlefin wrote:


the thing is, your analogy isn't entirely apt; and there are some entirely and some partially legitimate complaints against others.
Which is why there's things like contributory negligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_negligence
some of the other people in this case aren't like that passenger, they contributed far more directly to the issue.
and people who treat the actual case as if it was like that analogy, and asserting that the others did nothing relevant or worthy of consideration in assessing the incident are also missing a vital part of the overall matter.

and again there's the key difference between blameworthy causation and non-blameworthy causation.

we all know that some of her supporters aren't doing enough focusing on the issues with hillary, but likewise some of her opponents are doing too much focusing on that, without giving enough credence to other factors.
I'm against all the inaccuracies, and in the cases here, was focused on the latter.

On November 17 2016 08:21 GreenHorizons wrote:


What influence are you suggesting couldn't have been overcome by her just being a better candidate? I'm not talking ridiculous standards, I'm talking about things like actually going to states she wrongly assumed were sure things (Wisconsin) or not wasting time and money on states she had no chance at, or here's one, not set up a private server in some random place.

You fix those three mistakes, and Hillary wins, all the other stuff counts, but doesn't change the outcome. All three of those were totally under her control. She is the reason she lost, sure others helped, but she is the reason she lost.