American Politics

[Lady Kuno]

Originally Posted by deoxys

DNC Staffer Screams At Donna Brazile For Helping Elect Donald Trump

Holy shit. You go, dude. Bravo.

You da real MVP.

[Stealthy]

Yes. The proper response to a failed Presidential election is to move farther to the extreme. Ideological purity is the best quality for anybody seeking the Presidency. So long as it's fealty to our ideology, of course.

[Emi]

Originally Posted by Son_of_Shadows

You can't possibly compare peaceful protest with suggestions of armed rising. Nobody is obliged to roll over and accept the man's policies. Protest is a fuckin democratic right.

It is also a democratic right to disagree with said protests and voice our concerns. Disagreement does not mean we are saying to strip their rights away. Chill out dude.

[Mozz]

Soros funded

[Jerichi]

Re: Tulsi Gaddard; she was born in American Samoa - is she eligible to be a US president?

[Snorby]

It's a US territory so as far as I know she's allowed.

[Miror]

Originally Posted by Jerichi

Re: Tulsi Gaddard; she was born in American Samoa - is she eligible to be a US president?

McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone and he was eligible, Gabbard should be fine.

[deoxys]

The bigger problem with Gabbard is trying to sell a Hindu woman of color as presidential material to half of the country (nevermind that she is a decorated combat veteran).

It's sad that I even had to type those words but here we are.

[Emi]

Gabbard would probably not be a good choice in the 2020 election.

[Rangeet]

Comparing advocating armed revolution to reasonably peaceful protests is so ridiculous it's not even funny. Additionally, there is an actual completely rational reason to actually advocate armed revolution against a Trump presidency (though of course, nobody is doing it and it ain't gonna happen): If you believe that his presidency alone is the tipping point in the global warming race, then, as I said before, nothing else really matters.

But wait for the real protests. They aren't gonna start until they start pushing their shitty legislature through. Bernie Sanders has a voice now, and nothing the Republicans do will be kept quiet. He's already starting a campaign to make Keith Ellison the DNC chair.

And as for ideological purity: There is going to be one major argument the Democratic party has to deal with. Whether they should be going for the millennial turnout or whether they should try to appeal to Trump's fanbase. They better figure out the answer fucking fast, or the world has to deal with eight years of Trump.

[Blastoise]

Originally Posted by deoxys

DNC Staffer Screams At Donna Brazile For Helping Elect Donald Trump

Holy shit. You go, dude. Bravo.

I'm glad it only took the election of the most unqualified human being in America to the presidency for people to recognize what an incompetent shitbird Donna Brazile is.

Originally Posted by Stealthy

Yes. The proper response to a failed Presidential election is to move farther to the extreme. Ideological purity is the best quality for anybody seeking the Presidency. So long as it's fealty to our ideology, of course.

There's a legitimate argument to be made that "third way" political strategy is going to be a nonstarter for Democrats going forward, given that the Republican party moves ever further right and the open question of why the Republican base would go in on a centrist Democrat when they could simply pick whoever Breitbart has declared to be sufficiently ideologically pure today.

More importantly, there will be some ideological shifting on both sides as Trump managed to win on a protectionist, anti-globalization platform contrary to what has been until now the essential consensus of both political parties.

EDIT: Now that things have relatively settled down and Trump's cabinet is starting to take shape I want to see what everyone's thoughts on Trump's first hundred days might be like, since he inherited a Congress full of people who were entirely expecting him to be the Albatross that dragged them all down and is building a cabinet full of people who backed him because they had nothing to lose. About the only thing I'm willing to guarantee won't happen at this point is any serious prosecution of Clinton, since animals and proles go free and I suspect the Democrats aren't going to let her try and become the next Henry Clay to their detriment.

[Emi]

No one compared those two things, Rangeet. Literally no one. Concept, at least in my eye, was pretty clearly talking about Trump not wanting to concede the election. I myself spoke of concerns that were independent of what other Trump supporters wanted.

[deoxys]

Facebook has really gotten to me. So I'm gonna go off a bit here and say things I won't say on there (despite having ranted there, A LOT, the last few days)

The democratic process worked as intended. Trump won fair and square. I fucking hate it, but he did. The fact that people are hoping that faithless electors choose Hillary over him when the Electoral College votes is honestly kind of fucked. You're basically saying that you hope the election gets rigged so that she turns out to be the winner instead.

Yeah, she won the popular vote. The College was made to balance that out for people in rural areas [edit: Actually it's way more complex than that and this is only slightly true, but whatever]. Does the College suck? Probably. But the system worked as intended. If they did vote her in anyway, that would even FURTHER divide this country, and it would just make the whole "rigged system" thing seem even more true. The DNC fucked up.

We can protest, we can stand against him, and we can hope he will move to the left on some issues. And campaign for 2018 and 2020. That's what we have the power to do.

We need to accept this. You don't need to accept him as your President, but you need to accept that he is the President.

/rant.

[Emi]

The faithless elector thing should be shot down at every opportunity imo. It's literally one of the worst things I've seen and heard of this cycle. It works for...literally never. Clinton will come in on a Republican Congress who will make damn sure they stonewall anything and everything she tries to do. Expect the government to be shut down pretty much every year. They will do this out of spite and out of anger (justified anger, I might add).

Clinton will not be relected in 2020. In fact, more than likely, it will be Trump, again. You know what you've done by doing this? You've given Trump his rhetoric. He can now stand and say, "See? The election is rigged. I had won the election only to have people steal it away from me behind closed doors." He will then likely get the election in 2024, regardless of how insane he was. You'll have alienated every moderate Democrat and every single Republican (even the ones who are reasonable) from your cause. You'll be extremely hard pressed to ever find a candidate who can get millennial support and get anything of than that. No one wants to put the country in that situation again.

The faithless elector thing is an amazing way to force the Progressive movement to commit suicide.

[deoxys]

Some light hearted humor for those of us not feeling very light hearted.

[deoxys]

[Escalion]

I saw some posts in here regarding the Anti-Trump protests. Well, the Pro-Trump brigade is having their own protests too. My -whatever you believe in-, what are some of those people terrible human beings...

Beware bad English, it's a google translate of the Dutch article that I only fixed the worst mistakes in.

Originally Posted by Dutch News site NU.nl

Ku Klux Klan announces celebration parade to celebrate victory Trump (link to original, which includes all sources to the English articles mentioned)
Photo: AFP
Published: November 11 2016 10:59
Last Updated: November 11, 2016 11:06

One of the largest sections of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) has announced a celebration parade to celebrate the victory of Donald Trump. The meeting would take place on 3 December.
The website announces The Loyal White Knights of Pelham, as the group from South Carolina called on the meeting. A time and location are not yet known.

The KKK is a movement that promotes the superiority of the white race. The organization was founded after the Civil War of dissatisfaction with the abolition of slavery. The members appear in public, often with white caps that conceal their faces.

The last revival knew the KKK in the sixties, when the civil rights movement in the US to gain influence. Members also regularly committed violence against African Americans.

Support
Today, America has dozens of separate organizations that have expressed related to the Ku Klux Klan, such as The Loyal White Knights.

David Duke, one of the best-known KKK members, openly supported Donald Trump during the presidential election. Trump has distanced himself from the organization.

Hate Crimes
Various media report over the last two days, since the election of President Trump, a marked increase in the number of hate crimes in the US On social media like Facebook and Twitter, claiming Muslim Americans, Latinos, African-Americans and gay men harassed or attacked by being Trump supporters.

Trump said during his campaign include all Muslims to want to deny access to the US and want to build a wall to stop the flow of Mexicans to the US. Vice president Mike Pence has said that gay people pose a danger to society.

Heil Trump
At the University of San Diego police investigating a 'hate crime' against two Muslim students which abused and robbed would be. The perpetrators claimed to support Donald Trump while the woman, who wore a hijab, was harassed. On the school grounds swastikas and the words "Heil Trump" were also painted.

At a school in Pennsylvania dark and gay students were harassed , while references were made to the victory of Trump. White students called Afro-American students "cotton pickers" and "Negroes" and they went to stand around them while doing the Hitler salute. The school has immediately convened a meeting with parents and students.

In the state of North Carolina, many minor incidents reported . On a wall in the city of Durham are chalked graffiti texts as' Black lives do not matter. " On the car of a gay couple was glued a poster that says "Can not wait until your "marriage" is overturned by a REAL President: gay families burn in hell # Trump2016 #Repent.

transgender
The Guardian saw on Twitter many American Muslims who don't dare to wear Islamic robes. Catering staff of non-US origin tweets photos of receipts which customers slogans like "Go back to China," and wrote "Trump power".

An African-American woman reports The New York Post that she was approached in the Queens neighborhood by white teenagers who said "she just sit down at the back of the bus, as before, because Trump is now president.

A helpline for transgender people who face discrimination received Wednesday three times as many calls as normal. In Tennessee the car of a transgender was set on fire; on the windshield of her car "TRUMP" was written.

[Lady Kuno]

Originally Posted by deoxys

Trump won fair and square. I fucking hate it, but he did.

When Bush beat Gore despite the popular vote he said a quote that I liked. "If the popular vote mattered I would have campaigned more in Texas." and that's the truth. There are a lot of New Yorkers who just don't give a shit about voting (or voted for 3rd party/Harambe) because they know their vote does count at all. Is that fair? Yes and no. But Trump and Clinton knew that's how it worked.

When you have states like Wyoming with 500k people and NY with 20mil then you can understand why the EC exists.

[Escalion]

Originally Posted by Lady Kuno

When you have states like Wyoming with 500k people and NY with 20mil then you can understand why the EC exists.

Maybe it's because I'm from Europe, but no, no I don't.
The president is the president of every citizen, not of every individual piece of land the country is arbitrarily divided into. So I see no reason whatsoever why the vote of someone in Wyoming should have 3 or 4 times as much power as one cast by someone in California. They're both votes for the president of the entire country as a whole.

And the winner-takes-all system makes it even worse. If you're a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, you might as well stay home, or vote for your mom/Harambe/Master Chief cause your vote won't matter anyways. It's a ridiculous, backwards and seriously outdated system what the US has at the moment. And I might hope we've long since left behind us the times where ordinary people where considered too stupid to vote for a leader themselves.

[Lady Kuno]

Originally Posted by Escalion

Maybe it's because I'm from Europe, but no, no I don't.
The president is the president of every citizen, not of every individual piece of land the country is arbitrarily divided into. So I see no reason whatsoever why the vote of someone in Wyoming should have 3 or 4 times as much power as one cast by someone in California. They're both votes for the president of the entire country as a whole.

And the winner-takes-all system makes it even worse. If you're a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, you might as well stay home, or vote for your mom/Harambe/Master Chief cause your vote won't matter anyways. It's a ridiculous, backwards and seriously outdated system what the US has at the moment. And I might hope we've long since left behind us the times where ordinary people where considered too stupid to vote for a leader themselves.

It's because everyones vote matters that the EC exists. If it didn't, presidents would only campaign in NY, Cali, Texas, etc and no one would give any amount of fucks in regards to rural America.

[Muyotwo]

Originally Posted by Lady Kuno

It's because everyones vote matters that the EC exists. If it didn't, presidents would only campaign in NY, Cali, Texas, etc and no one would give any amount of fucks in regards to rural America.

As opposed to only campaigning in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Florida?

[Escalion]

Originally Posted by Lady Kuno

It's because everyones vote matters that the EC exists. If it didn't, presidents would only campaign in NY, Cali, Texas, etc and no one would give any amount of fucks in regards to rural America.

But it doesn't :/
Of course they're going to campaign more where more people live. But that shouldn't matter, cause the whole State level shouldn't matter, the vote is for the president of the country. So what if more people live in NY, Cali and Texas? 1 person, 1 equal vote. All the people in Wyoming still get their vote count for 1, just as those in NY, Cali and everywhere else. but now it doesn't.

E.g. a popular vote system should in my opinion always be preferred. All the people who live in rural places all over the country still count as a huge pile of votes regardless of which state they live in, and they won't forget if they're being purposefully ignored. And their vote can still swing the results in any direction when looked at it on a national level.

[Selena]

Escalion I get what you're saying but the differences between rural and city are huge. If it worked that way it's very much like two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

And the State level should totally matter, States are not provinces, they're semi-autonomous countries. Only slightly less autonomous than EU members in the EU. Thinking of the US as a single country is not how it's operated.

[Lady Kuno]

Originally Posted by Muyotwo

As opposed to only campaigning in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Florida?

It does suck that my vote is essentially meaningless and that some states matter way more, but it is going to suck the other way too. It will just suck for different people. There's no way to do this right.

[Escalion]

I come from and live in a rural area myself, and I just can't understand why a system that would count my 1 rural vote for 4 city votes would be any good. Politicians can't and won't ignore rural and agricultural places when it comes to actual politics, and in the end it's the politics that matter and not the campaign.