US Presidential Race

And debate season is over.

This was hardly a debate though and more of a "who can shit over who the most".

Just a month to go and we are done with this lads.

Glad these are over. I really don't know why I've been staying up for them.

Must be FOMO.

Trump needed a big performance tonight to attract more voters. He failed tonight, I think. Clinton didn't really need to do anything special and she didn't. She wins by default.

Trump was much more calm tonight, but still managed to sound like an absolute trainwreck on nearly every topic, but he did hit Clinton hard on the e-mails, her experience and the economy. Him disagreeing not only with Pence, but his own daughter on accepting the election results is going to send tremors throughout the GOP tonight and tomorrow, for sure. Every losing candidate accepts the results, regardless of how negative the campaign was. Oh and he called Clinton a "nasty" woman at the end. That is blowing up all over twitter. That's his very last straw with women. And very likely this election.

Clinton had no answer for the wikileaks reports on her e-mails. She did not answer the questions about the Clinton Foundation as well and it's ties to donor favors and countries like Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, she parried Trump on just about anything else without much effort.

Haven't watched any of them and glad that I haven't, don't need to waste my time on these two

RealGunner wrote:Both Hillary and Trump have spent most of the debate throwing scandals at each other.

They really are a couple who are on the verge of divorce

While I'm no fan of Clinton, I think there's some danger of the false equivalency they're treated with. I agree with the general narrative of "they're both bad candidates", but this got somehow turned into "they're equally bad candidates", which they are not.

Hillary is a boring established career politician, and a bit hawkish, and will only gradually tackle any problems for fear of political fallout, since she is someone who manages damage, not someone who actually does something new.

But Trump is an insane bigot, a career criminal and a serial liar. I think the world could've lived with John Kasich or whoever, but not with Trump.

Tbf John Kasich would have been a disaster too. He's worse than Romney (who wasn't even that great of a candidate four years ago, and was made fun of a lot on here) who got rekt by Obama. Only made to look half decent by his opposition (Ted Cruz, Rubio, Trump, Walker, Carson ).

Though I guess your point is we would have survived...which I guess is true. We probably would have. Just would have been a bad existence under an incompetent politician.

Tbf, I agree with you as a whole Viva.

Kasich is, of course, immensely popular in Ohio, but what makes his popularity interesting is that, as Governor, he does have a fair amount of support from the same groups that Trump has completely alienated: middle-class, educated women and minorities and while not an evangelical like Cruz, would've probably been a welcome candidate for that group as well. He's not particularly popular with the minority poor though around major cities like Cleveland though.

I personally think he was the strongest of all 3 GOP candidates at the end of the primary and the one most likely to either beat Hillary outright or keep it a whole lot closer than Trump has it right now with key demographics.

Is U.S going to slightly close it's economy after the next election? What do native U.S citizens think?

Depends on what you mean by "close the economy".

Yeah don't get too hung up on the Kasich part of my argument, was just mentioning the first not overtly insane Republican I could think of.

VivaStPauli wrote:Yeah don't get too hung up on the Kasich part of my argument, was just mentioning the first not overtly insane Republican I could think of.

Right on man, they're all suffering from a bad case of vyalotekushchayaâ, innit.

McLewis wrote:Depends on what you mean by "close the economy".

Some talk about bringing the manufacturing back to U.S and decreasing the trade deficit with other countries by bringing tariff/trade restrictions. Is there any truth in it?

Yeah McLewis I don't disagree, I'm talking about Kasich's skill and ability as a politician and as a candidate in general, outside of the specific context of being against Hillary. I agree for the GOP he would have been quite a decent choice against Hillary and considering how close Trump made it, I think he very well could have won.

Just that in terms of Kasich by himself, he's incredibly average and worse than Romney. He would have gotten beaten harder than Romney by Obama or anyone not completely unlikeable and corrupt as Hillary.

Fortunately for Dems, Republican voters didn't want a conservative president it seems.

Kasich probably could've persuaded centrists and independent conservatives to vote for him but i seriously doubt Trump supporters would've fallen in line with him in the general election. alt right voters basically hates mainstream republicans, too many differences between them like immigration and trade. this reminds me of the 2012 election in which Tea Party called Romney a moderate. and it was probably one of the reasons he couldn't defeat Obama.

The truth is, no Republican was ever really going to beat Hillary. It may have been really close with some but she was always going to win, as terrible a candidate as she is. Everyone keeps going on about how fascinating Trump supporters are and how they're some "silent majority". The real silent majority are Clinton's base (inherited from Obama). The fact is, it will be even harder for the GOP to win the presidency in 2020 and that much harder in 2024, barring some sort of catastrophic presidency from Clinton (a.k.a Bush's Iraq war + market crash + Katrina response).

Until the GOP goes back to the drawing board and makes changes to how they appeal to non-whites and also purge themselves of the racist courting/Southern Strategy, they'll never win another Presidential election.

Currently, the GOP is made up of evangelicals, white supremacists, gun nuts and militias, wealthy old white men and libertarians (a.k.a moderate Republicans). Problem is, the changing demographics of the country means these groups aren't enough to win a Presidential election. If they don't learn from their mistakes, the base will nominate another Trump in 2020 and they'll lose again.

At the moment, Trump is polling worse nationally than Carter and Mondale and right around the same as Goldwater and McGovern. This is going to be a modern day landslide. Red states like Arizona & Georgia are already turning.

For the first time in a very long time the rich will vote against their economist self-interest and vote Democrat:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/business/rich-vote-republican-not-this-election-maybe.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

I'm curious btw, has the NY times even tried to put out an article this election season that attempted to be unbiased or maybe tried to understand where Trump and Trump supporters may be coming from?

Never seen a paper so shamelessly run against a candidate. I'm aware that papers are inherently biased and I try to remember that as I frequent the liberal Guardian, or flip past the ultra right fox news. However, the NY times is supposed to be above the journalistic standard of Fox. Hell, the Guardian has been more trump friendly.

I despise trump but it has annoyed me. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't read the NY times often

At the same time I hate it when media is unbiased for neutrality's sake alone. Take for instance the false equivalence they often put by having a scientist and a climate change denier have equal time on screen, equal perceived respectability etc, when in reality there is wide consensus on the issue. The media should just present one side of the issue and treat the deniers as what they are: people with very fringe views undeserving of the medium.

The media's job isn't to be unbiased. They're supposed to be well-informed and use their power to hold the politicians in check and prevent abuse of power.

The media is supposed to be the guard dog of the three branches of power. They need to be critical of everything and hold politicians accountable if they say stupid shit.

It's hard to be unbiased when that's your job, because you have to have a certain agenda in protecting the people in regards to distributing the information.

The journalism can always be better though.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:At the same time I hate it when media is unbiased for neutrality's sake alone. Take for instance the false equivalence they often put by having a scientist and a climate change denier have equal time on screen, equal perceived respectability etc, when in reality there is wide consensus on the issue. The media should just present one side of the issue and treat the deniers as what they are: people with very fringe views undeserving of the medium.

I realise two key factors in persuasion are authority and consensus. I can't defend the position with a consensus, but then consensus often mirrors the process of self-fulfilling prophesy and is a fickle tenuous thing. A number of consensuses (among intellectuals) in recent times:

- Homosexuality being a sociopathic disorder
- Stalinism
- Maoism
- Lobotomies
- Low carbohydrate diets
- Behaviorism
- Freudianism

I feel like it's cliche to say but it seems like it needs to be said constantly that within reason consensus isn't necessarily right, and no-platforming dissenters is stupid pathetic and dangerous.

I can point out (a lot) of authority figures that it would be ridiculous to no-platform:

John R Christy - "I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see"

Patrick J Michaels - "A number of studies point to sources other than greenhouse gases as explanations for the modest warming trend of the late 20th century"

Richard S. Lindzen - "Given that the evidence strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such waking is similarly diminished"

Roy W Spencer - "As a climate researcher, I am increasingly convinced that most of our recent global warming has been natural, not manmade"

Fred Singer - "We see no evidence in the climate record that the increase in CO2, which is real, has any appreciable affect on the global temperature"

Sherwood Idso - I find no compelling reason to believe that the earth will necessarily experience any global warming as a consequence of the ongoing rise in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration"

And more

They aren't whacky guys, whether they are right or not, given their credentials, why do you want to cut them off?

I feel like people on the other side are acting like insane dickheads. I'm talking about people who say scepticism is high treason against humanity, deserves the death sentence, should be illegal, and so forth. (Yeah serious people saying such things), this makes me think they are totalitarian freaks.

I also think the people responsible for the 97% study are disingenuous twats, what do you say to that?

Trump got this

Hillary Clinton email probe reopened by FBI director

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37805525

Vibe wrote:Trump got this

I hope! Hillary is too crooked....

Myesyats wrote:

Vibe wrote:Trump got this

I hope! Hillary is too crooked....

Hillary is too crooked, but not the guy who was a defendant in the largest housing discrimination suit to ever take place in this country?

Would Trump rent an Apartment to Matuidi if he needed one?

Hillary is too crooked but Trump still hasn't released his tax returns

Both are just awful candidates and if this is the final 2 in the running for President of the USA the whole system is shit.

But, for banters purpose i'd pick Trump.